Print PageMisalignment of human and natural boundaries can lead to the abuse of environmental resources and the inequitable distribution of ecosystem services. This is a common problem in managing watershed integrity where the jurisdictional areas of multiple local governments with differing management and planning strategies overlap. Generally the result is, those that bear the cost of water quality management do not actually receive the benefits, in this case a plentiful supply of clean drinking water. In the Triangle region of North Carolina, conflicts around rapidly expanding urban centers and resource availability are apparent, especially regarding the provisioning of clean water. We aim to link data on landcover, landuse planning, socio-economic status, lifestyle choices, and water quality to determine how socio-ecological patterns and processes at multiple scales affect supply and demand of ecosystem services. We have researchers and students from three institutions (NCSU, UNC, and Duke) conducting a myriad of related studies on municipal planning, ecosystem dynamics, and demographic change over time. These studies together form the foundation of a data platform and collaboration with organizations like Triangle J Council of Governments, which help coordinate governmental efforts at all levels to manage the region’s resources and growth. Our methods include a combination of water quality monitoring, analysis of U.S. census data, and the study of comprehensive plan quality, as well as, modeling landcover classification schemes and how they relate to residential lifestyle choices as described by marketing analyses of household purchases.
Results/Conclusions
Our results indicate: 1. Communities with the highest quality planning strategies may not actually have developed methods to implement their plans effectively; 2. Residential lifestyle choices are a more valuable predictor of ecosystem structure than socio-economic status alone; 3. Demographics around reservoirs have shifted towards residents with higher socio-economic status over time; 4. Landuse may not be the best predictor of water quality in urban streams. Our current challenge is to fully integrate these results to model the effects of urbanization on water quality and expand our analyses to incorporate other ecosystem services in the region. Resilient urban ecosystems with equitable distribution of services cannot be attained until we understand how these socio-ecological processes interact and influence the patterns of development we see in our cities today.
