"There are things that humans can deliberately manipulate, like the water system. But then there are a lot of by-products of our activities -- big changes in our ecosystem that we don't necessarily recognize or try to control," Grimm said. "The good example of one of these is a big increase in nitrogen input, which comes about because of the burning of fossil fuels in cars. Driving around fertilizes the ecosystem.
"Is fertilizing a good thing? One of the things that we are going to do in the next phase is to investigate the consequences," she said.
While the team's interest is in doing fundamental ecology research, there are also some important applied science issues behind the project. "What we really want to know is whether we can have a sustainable urban ecosystem in this kind of environment and setting. What are the elements of it that are warning signs of vulnerability, of some kind of event that could cause collapse? How do our institutions and the systems we have set up stand up against various kinds of stress? Is the urban ecosystem resilient?" Grimm asked.
"People in ecology are beginning to talk about designer ecosystems systems that have been heavily influenced by humans. What we're doing is pioneering this," Grimm said.
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Contact: James Hathaway
hathaway@asu.edu
480-965-6375
Arizona State University
3-Jan-2005