Print PageCities form hubs where social and biophysical mechanisms interact to regulate massive transfers of energy and material. Our ULTRA site, the Tampa Bay Region Socioecosystem (TBRS), investigates how social organization and distribution of power drive resource transfer, and thus modify social and ecological structures and functions in the city and its hinterlands. Water is our focal resource, and the TBRS encompasses a mosaic of water providing and consuming areas overlying varied urban and rural land covers. We investigate three core questions. (Q1) What variability exists throughout the region in perceptions and values of hydroecological change, and what demographic factors explain that variability? (Q2) How, according to key informants at various levels in the water management hierarchy, do social and political power result in particular outcomes of water redistribution? (Q3) Owing to the region’s shallow groundwater and karst geology, do its numerous wetlands ecologically and hydrologically express changes in water policy, and do these changes inform future policies?
Results/Conclusions
Changes in wetland ecohydrology and water management reveal (i.) cyclical feedbacks between biophysical and socio-political subsystems of the TBRS, and (ii.) interactions among natural resource managers across hierarchical levels. Human water needs in the TBRS are largely met by groundwater pumped from wellfields. In the 20th Century, area governments maintained independent ownership of wellfields, often beyond jurisdictional boundaries, generating tension over resource rights and ultimately motivating the 1998 formation of a regional utility that consolidated wellfield ownership. This utility receives permits from a state-governed authority, which in 2010 required a 25% reduction in groundwater withdrawals. Our ULTRA thus begins studying the TBRS at the outset of a regulatory transition. Through focus groups and public meeting observations, we have captured variability in perceptions of water policy and ecological change. These findings have led to an instrument for household surveys stratified by location relative to putative conflict zones in the water supply/use mosaic, and a directory of key informants to continue answering Q1 and Q2. These results are being coupled with investigations of sentinel changes in wetland ecosystems (Q3). We have documented variability among wetlands in soil oxidation and long-term water table and vegetation dynamics, suggesting an uneven response to water management activities. We are now testing landscape position hypotheses for this spatial variability and are poised to investigate how this ecohydrological change feeds back on future iterations of the management cycle.
