Human alterations of the earth's surface represent one of the planet's most significant cumulative global environmental changes. In countries such as the US this process manifests principally as suburbanization. Our understanding of the specific causes and consequences of suburbanization -- an under-studied form of landscape change -- is limited because we also lack a systematic baseline description of the location, extent, timing, and rates of the changes where the process is suspected to be important. These knowledge gaps are increasingly being filled by "land change" and "vulnerability" assessments, or the integrated studies of the process, and why it matters to stakeholders. This REU Site project will build on 9 years of success engaging undergraduate researchers through the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program, which operates on the REU Site approach.
Intellectual Merit: Two research streams are proposed. The Forest Change Monitoring stream will produce validated measures of spatial & temporal forest composition changes in a landscape (Massachusetts) dominated by heterogeneous species assemblages and ownership groups. This stream will also contribute to the ?best-practices? literature for remote sensing applications, by articulating challenges and opportunities associated with constructing and maintaining a long-term, semi-automated satellite imagery-based forest monitoring program. The Vulnerability Assessment stream will examine the social causes and consequences of, and responses to, land-cover changes in the suburban Boston area, using remote sensing, statistical, and survey analytical techniques. Research products from both research streams will contribute to both substantive and methodological literatures on land use-environment, suburban studies, landscape ecology, and geographic information science.
Broader Impacts: The research proposed here will produce salient results that provide resources for practitioners and suburban communities experiencing rapid changes associated with their development patterns; publications will be produced for both scholarly and stakeholder (e.g., USFS, NASA, federal/state/municipal/community groups, elected officials) audiences. Undergraduate students will be integrally involved in the implementation of established research design and in the design of future research. These students will benefit from interacting with HERO MA & PhD students serving as research mentors.
A rigorous two-part assessment will be conducted. The PIs are committed to furthering their successes engaging students from underrepresented groups by testing new methods for recruiting to enhance diversity. HERO will be closely integrated with K-12 communities and science journalists through existing efforts under separate but related NSF-CNH funding.
