Convergences and synergies between conserving biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services to people: The Chicago ULTRA Project

Background/Question/Methods . Our Chicago ULTRA-Ex research address a fundamental question: In a complex urban/metropolitan system, what are the convergences and tradeoffs between conserving biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services to people? The research focuses on the Green Infrastructure Vision (GIV) of the Chicago Wilderness alliance, a conservation consortium of over 250 organizations. The GIV, designed to implement the Biodiversity Recovery Plan of Chicago Wilderness, is already influencing long-range land planning in the Chicago region. Our goal is to investigate the convergences and tradeoffs between biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services in a human-dominated landscape.  We will summarize progress made on the following project objectives: (1) Conduct a critical examination of the connections between the biodiversity-recovery goals of the region-wide Green Infrastructure Vision and the delivery of several critical ecosystem services to human communities throughout the Chicago region. Theoretical and empirical findings of already funded, ongoing projects will inform this research, which will examine linkages between social and ecological systems in the context of biodiversity management, green-infrastructure conceptualization and implementation, and the delivery of ecosystem services from the cultural to the biogeochemical. (2) Determine the viable options for, and initiate a pilot “proof-of-concept” version of, a multi-faceted, interactive, web-based Chicago ULTRA-Hub. The proposed ULTRA-Hub will include an interactive platform for managing data, communicating research findings to planners and the public, and collaborating and interacting with scientists and practitioners. It will also be an umbrella and focal point for urban ecosystem research and policy, and will partner with regional education and outreach programs. 

Results/Conclusions . As with some of the ULTRA-Ex projects, funding has recently been just released and so our project is in the early stages of development.  Our presentation of results will focus on expected results summarizing projects (e.g. The Chicago Wilderness Land Management Research Program) and tools that already exist (e.g. hub technologies, Local Decision Maker (LDM) and Stewmap) and show how these will be leveraged and integrated for our project.