Faculty Projects
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Graduate Student Projects
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Resources
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Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) in Urban Ecology |
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| The main objective of the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) in Urban Ecology is to educate a new kind of life, earth, or social scientist who is broader, more flexible, more collaborative, and more adept at linking science and social issues. Training is built on a model emphasizing collaboration and teamwork. Fellows earn degrees that emphasize integration among collaborative components beyond the student's home discipline. Collectively, these activities afford skills that are broadly applicable to careers in public and private sectors and in academia. Urban ecology is the organizing research theme of this IGERT. This theme incorporates the spatial scale characteristic of urban regions, the long-term perspective of the Long-Term Ecological Research program, and a comparative view of natural and human-dominated systems. The organizing question of the research endeavor is: How does the pattern of development of cities alter ecological conditions of the cities and their surrounding environments, and how do ecological changes feed back on further development via the human social system? This question obviously takes a different form in the collective mind of each discipline of our program; however, within each, it is inherently integrative (drawing broadly from subdisciplines). Even more significant is that by analyzing approaches to and answers from an array of disciplines we can achieve what might be considered a meta-integration provided by a multidisciplinary perspective. Annie Gustafson, IGERT Fellow:During the 2006-2007 academic year, Annie is working as a graduate research assistant at ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC). DCDC is one of five "Decision Making Under Uncertainty" centers funded by the National Science Foundation and it is devoted to the complementary objectives of pursuing research and increasing collaboration among policy makers, academics, and the greater community. Annie is currently assessing how water conservation has evolved over the three consecutive management plans for the Phoenix Active Management Area, which was established by the AZ Groundwater Management Act in 1980. Specifically, she is developing a a typology of water conservation that will further understanding of current policy efforts aimed at reducing regional water demand through regulatory, incentive- and information-based, and other approaches. She is also conducting a series of interviews with Phoenix area water conservation coordinators and specialists. One of the outcomes of this project will be a poster presentation of her research, currently titled, " Water Conversation Policy in an Arid Metropolitan Region: A Historical and Geographic Assessment of Phoenix, Arizona" at CAP LTER’s annual poster session on January 10, 2007.
For her dissertation, Annie intends to examine how Phoenix and Tucson developed complementary and contrasting cultures of water use and management. She is interested in explaining the historical factors that shaped water use, the development of distinctive urban water "cultures," and water conservation policies and practices as they evolved in each city over the course of the 20th century. In support of this project, she is currently studying each city's physical geography and hydrology (especially climate, rainfall, soil and slope, and surface and groundwater supplies), water consumption statistics (municipal, industrial, and agricultural), water policy history (federal, state, and urban), the development of irrigation and landscaping regulations, water education and conservation programs, population growth, land use transitions (e.g., agriculture to urban) and the evolving political economy of each city. As research progresses, Annie will document how distinctive water uses, water policies, and water cultures have evolved in these two cities over time, and the historical reasons for these differences. A comparative analysis of municipal water use and management in two similar but distinct urban environments will illuminate some of the inherent complexities of managing population growth and water use in arid regions, and most importantly, guide future policy-making to ensure a sustainable future. |
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Project Staff |
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Research Participant |
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Annie Gustafson, Department of History |
Project Advisor |
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Dr. Paul Hirt, Department of History |
Project Advisor |
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Professor Kelli L Larson, Department of Geography |
Contact Information |
Annie Gustafson |
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Links and Sponsors |
Arizona State University's IGERT in Urban Ecology Decision Center for a Desert City Global Institute of Sustainability Central Arizona - Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research page |
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