The Upham Brook watershed is an urban watershed that lies at the interface of a declining inner city and growth-oriented county with aging suburbs. The last five miles of the brook before it joins with the Chickahominy River has been identified as so dangerously polluted that it threatens the heath of the residents who live, in the watershed and those who drink water that runs through it. This watershed's condition, and the residents' response to this condition, raises questions that are fundamental to biological sciences and social sciences - questions concerning the biological processes that sustain and diminish plant and animal life., the social processes that promote the growth of a community and its decline, the psychological mechanisms that sustain health-threatening behaviors, and the institutional barriers put in place by be political system. The proposed research will integrate the fields of urban planning, social psychology, -urban politics, urban design, biology and decision-modeling in a multi-disciplinary research effort to examine these fundamental questions, and in go timing, provide decision-makers, land use planners, and citizens with a science-based multiobjective decision analysis model.
