1435881 (Wang). Rapid urbanization is associated with substantial modifications of land use and land cover (LULC), producing complex socio-ecological urban landscapes. Changes in LULC have profound impacts on urban-land-atmosphere interactions, with modification of the transport of energy, water, and tracers over built terrains. Well-known effects of these changes include the urban heat island (UHI) and the emission of greenhouse gases and pollutants, which will likely be exacerbated by anticipated climate change. In this project, the researchers will use development scenarios of Arizona's Sun Corridor developed jointly by city planners and researchers as prototypes for investigating urban system dynamics. The Sun Corridor is one of the fastest growing urban areas in the U.S. Rapid expansion of the Sun Corridor has attracted increasing research attention on many socio-ecological issues such as the UHI effect and regional hydroclimate impacts. Despite this effort, there is a lack of a novel physical modeling framework to investigate how innovative engineering design and socioeconomic planning can help to mitigate adverse environmental effects. This project aims to bridge this gap. The central hypothesis is that scenarios for future urban growth derived from numerical modeling can reveal the interplay between land use change and regional hydroclimate leading to novel outcomes for urban sustainability. To address this, urban system dynamics including human-environment interactions need to be faithfully represented by multi-scale modeling frameworks (MMF) at high resolution with statistically quantified uncertainty.
In this project, the researchers will develop an MMF by integrating the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with a state-of-the-art urban land surface model (LSM) to capture anthropogenic stresses and coupled transport of water and energy in urban canopies. The major outcome of the work will be the application of the integrated WRF-LSM for assessment of urban planning strategies. The result of simulations will shed light on how engineering infrastructure can ameliorate urban stresses, for example the adoption of green infrastructure to mitigate UHI. The work is expected to provide guidelines of sustainable urban development for land use and water resource planners, embracing various dimensions including water resources, hydroclimate, and engineering infrastructure. In addition, model uncertainty characterization in conjunction with scenario analysis, will provide insight into the vulnerability of urban environments to LULC and climate changes. Though this study is focused on the Sun Corridor, research findings are expected to have implications to other cities. This project will actively engage stakeholders and personnel from local cities and water resources and land planning agencies. The research team will seek participation and feedback from stakeholders in modeling efforts, scenario development, and interpretation of research findings relative to local cities and agencies throughout the project duration. Two-way communication between the project team and stakeholders will be conducted through technical briefings and workshops organized by the Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) at the Arizona State University. For example, LULC characteristics under future urban development will be gathered from city planners as the boundary conditions to the integrated WRF-LSM model. Meetings with stakeholders will be facilitated by auxiliary 3D graphic presentation and other innovative dissemination mechanisms. In addition, this project will support one research engineer and one graduate student at the Ph.D. level, who will be actively engaged in education and outreach activities throughout the project duration. Research findings of this study will be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate-level courses, and disseminated to scientific communities as well as broader audiences, through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journal publications, and outreach activities.
