Cedar Creek is one of 26 Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites around the world. LTER has recently embarked on an aggressive campaign to integrate social science aspects with ecological research. Studies of ecosystems are not complete without accounting for human activities, which can have a large and variable effect on environmental factors such as species distribution, hydrological cycles, and biogeochemical cycles.
LTER's focus on human interactions with the environment corresponds well with changes at Cedar Creek as the surrounding landscape is rapidly converted from agricultural lands to residential development creeping out of the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. As urbanization moves closer to the once-isolated Cedar Creek, it becomes even more relevant to examine human roles in surrounding ecosystems, a field of study referred to as human dimensions. The first in-depth human dimensions study at Cedar Creek will survey a gradient of occupant-owned, stand-alone households ranging from the urban core of the Twin Cities to residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of the Twin Cities (peri-urban). Surveys of household occupants and of the biophysical landscape surrounding households will be used to quantify the flows of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus through households, which can be important pollutants in some forms. This study will quantify how various behaviors (transportation, landscape management, pet ownership, household heating and cooling, and the like) contribute to overall carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus flow, and how that changes along an urban to rural gradient.
The second part of the study explores how different socioeconomic and biophysical factors contribute to variation in element flows among households. Variations in socioeconomic factors (such as income), demographic factors (numbers and ages of household occupants), as well as differences among households in the structure and type of landscape vegetation, likely affect the cycling of these elements. In addition, researchers will apply the theory of planned behavior to understanding the flow of elements through households. The theory of planned behavior analyzes an individual's actions by placing them within the framework of three belief structures. An individual's attitude towards a behavior is influenced by (1) his/her knowledge, (2) the individual's normative beliefs, defined as how he/she perceives other people will judge his/her actions and how willing he/she is to comply with social norms; and (3) the individual's perceived behavioral control, or how he/she perceives factors that facilitate or impede a behavior. Moral norms and demographic variables will also be considered in the analysis of human behavior.
A smaller study focuses on households in the vicinity of Cedar Creek to assess how carbon accumulates in plants and soils when farmlands are converted to residential landscapes. In this study, households within 10 km of Cedar Creek were selected to make up a gradient of sites that were converted from farmland at different times in the past. Cedar Creek has records of the uses of the surrounding lands dating back several decades. Carbon accumulation rates in these lands will be compared to those of abandoned farmlands that have become grasslands, and that has been well-studied in the past by Cedar Creek researchers.
Results of these studies will hopefully provide insights into how the influence of various belief structures affect human behavior related to the flow of elements that influence water quality, climate change, and air quality, and how these influences and behaviors may change from peri-urban to urban neighborhoods.
