Large cities have a disproportionate influence on environmental conditions from local to global scales because to support large human populations and high living standards, they must import enormous quantities of energy, food, and materials. Cities are also the foci of human interactions and innovations concerning cultural diversity, economic inequality, institution building, and policy formation. Recent projections indicate that human populations will become more urban in distribution, with people becoming more concentrated in cities. Understanding the conditions that affect urban sustainability is important for city planning and operations and also important to the sustainability of other landscapes, such as hinterlands and rural areas, on which the city depends. Urbanites need to be in a position to identify and mitigate any emerging vulnerabilities that might threaten the persistence of their cities. An ideal place to study these conditions is the San Juan metropolitan area in northeastern Puerto Rico. As the capital of Puerto Rico and home of 68 percent of the island's population, San Juan has one of the largest economies in the Caribbean and is often seen as a model for the development of other Caribbean or Latin American economies. Pervasive urban development and susceptibility to potential perturbations of the global oil market and climate change, however, are exacerbating ongoing social and environmental risks associated with urban development, including the reduction of forest cover, biodiversity changes, diminishing stream quality, increasing risks to floods, exposure to pollution, decreased access to local natural resources, and droughts. San Juan stakeholders are taking measures to prevent further degradation through social organizing and stewardship activities, such as restoring streams, building city gardens, contesting illegal construction projects, and forming underground economies, in a bottom-up response to the socioeconomic conditions that generate risks. Despite these trends, the influence of these interactions and responses in reducing vulnerabilities and moving San Juan to sustainability is uncertain. This research project will analyze the interactions among the biophysical, economic, and social sources of vulnerability for San Juan and evaluate to what degree they influence the city's potential for sustainability. The investigators will develop an intellectual framework based on urban social-ecological systems theory; develop an integrated system of sampling, data collection, and experimentation; synthesize and model changes in the San Juan social ecological system based on probable future biophysical realities as well as the desires/actions of stakeholders and policy goals; implement a stakeholder participation support structure that builds the capacity and tools for engagement in research and decision-making; and educate and empower students and citizens through their effective participation in both research and city governance. The methods to be used in this study include field observations, interviews and survey with stakeholders and public in general, statistical tools, geographical information systems, environmental monitoring, systems modeling and simulation, and participatory research methods.
This research project will have significant implications for urban sustainability theory in general and urban social-ecological systems theory and methodology specifically. The theoretical framework will combine social science vulnerability theory; physical laws like conservation of mass and thermodynamics and their relation to development and economic activity; and the ecological focus that explains the biodiversity of the city and the functioning of ecosystems to its inhabitants. In addition to the rigorous synthesis and modeling of cities' long-term sustainability, this project will enhance interdisciplinary methods through transformative collaboration between social and biophysical scientists, and development of a vocabulary among the disciplines to achieve an effective synthesis. The proposed activities of this project will affect the way San Juan inhabitants relate and plan the future of their urban environment, and they will provide new information to help manage tropical cities more effectively. The project also will develop new approaches for the integration of social and biophysical studies of urban areas in general. The project will educate and train the next generation of scientists, especially women and minorities, using the integration of social and ecological sciences in an urban setting representative of cities that will face substantial socio-ecological challenges during this century. This award was funded as an Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) award as the result of a special competition jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
The San Juan Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) is a long-term network and research site established in the city of San Juan in 2010 to produce knowledge on urban areas and support policy, education, and local initiatives towards the sustainability of the city. San Juan ULTRA-Ex supports collaborations among multiple academic institutions, agencies, non-profit partners, and community leaders to conduct study the city of San Juan as a social-ecological system (SES) (see Figure 1). A SES lens looks at the complexity of human-nature interactions, taking into consideration multiple spatial and temporal scales, and how these systems can adapt and be sustainable in the face of future changes, such as climate change. Our network of scientists integrate expertise from the natural and social sciences, including ecology, hydrology, geography, urban planning, ecological economics, public policy, sociology, landscape architecture, as well as the humanities. Most of our research projects focus on the Río Piedras River Watershed (RPRW) given that this watershed is almost entirely contained within San Juan city boundaries and it is crucially important to the city’s social and environmental quality. We established ten sampling points within the RPRW where we conduct social-ecological studies (see Figure 2). This boundary is flexible, however, meant to be adapted to meet scientific and social priorities. Thus, we also have three sampling points and other projects taking place outside of the boundary to address broader areas and issues of significant to the city of San Juan. Over the past four years we have made numerous contributions to the field of urban social-ecology, interdisciplinary research, and collaborative efforts with stakeholders throughout the RPRW and the Municipality of San Juan. In addition to science products, we share new interdisciplinary understandings through our website (www.sanjuanultra.org), presentations and seminars, the publication of research bulletins and maps, educational and community engagement activities, and direct interactions with practitioners, managers, and decision-makers in the city. Our major scientific accomplishments include the publication of 25 scientific articles (including a Special Issue in the journal Ecology and Society), over 50 presentations to scientific and public audiences, the development of we-based decision-support tools for green infrastructure planning (Figure 3), and the establishment of a Special Commission with the Municipality of San Juan Office of Urban Planning, Environment and Permits. In addition to the close to 80 university students (undergraduate and graduate) that have participated and been trained through San Juan ULTRA activities, we have engaged more than a thousand members of the public of all ages through projects with local schools, field trips, workshops with elderly centers, oral history documentations, GIS workshops, and local environmental fairs. We have also built a web-based network of educational sign posts throughout the watershed so that the public has access to data, information, and activities they can do from the field, and in that way, directly interact with their urban environment. The San Juan ULTRA-Ex has now expanded to include new collaborators from different disciplines, institutions, and other cities. The research network has continued to function after the funding from NSF ended, thus, the continuity of the program with contribution from the Forest Service and participating organizations is a major achievement. For instance, an Urban Field Station was established at the USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry in the center of the watershed. In addition, we initiated new networks with cities across the US and abroad. Our ultimate goal is to develop long-term, holistic understanding of how environmental, social, and economic factors interact in the city of San Juan, compare this knowledge to other cities and build theories of urban social-ecological systems, and put this science at the service of the city.
