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Article
Assessing the Homogenization of Urban Land Management With an Application to US Residential Lawn Care
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
  • Colin Polsky, Clark University
  • J. Morgan Grove, U.S. Forest Service
  • Chris Knudson
  • Peter M. Groffman, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
  • Neil D. Bettez, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
  • Jeannine Cavender-Bares, University of Minnesota - St. Paul
  • Sharon J. Hall, Arizona State University
  • James B. Heffernan, Duke University
  • Sarah E. Hobbie, University of Minnesota - St. Paul
  • Kelli L. Larson, Arizona State University
  • Jennifer L. Morse, Portland State University
  • Christopher Neill, University of Minnesota - St. Paul
  • Kristen C. Nelson, University of Minnesota - St. Paul
  • Laura A. Ogden, Florida International University
  • Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, University of Vermont
  • Diane E. Pataki, University of Utah
  • Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Indiana University - Bloomington
  • Meredith K. Steele, Virgina Tech
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-25-2014
Subjects
  • Biotic communities -- United States,
  • Urban ecology (Biology),
  • Land management,
  • Land use,
  • Urbanization,
  • Lawn care industry,
  • Sustainability
Abstract

Changes in land use, land cover, and land management present some of the greatest potential global environmental challenges of the 21st century. Urbanization, one of the principal drivers of these transformations, is commonly thought to be generating land changes that are increasingly similar. An implication of this multiscale homogenization hypothesis is that the ecosystem structure and function and human behaviors associated with urbanization should be more similar in certain kinds of urbanized locations across biogeophysical gradients than across urbanization gradients in places with similar biogeophysical characteristics. This paper introduces an analytical framework for testing this hypothesis, and applies the framework to the case of residential lawn care. This set of land management behaviors are often assumed-not demonstrated-to exhibit homogeneity. Multivariate analyses are conducted on telephone survey responses from a geographically stratified random sample of homeowners (n = 9,480), equally distributed across six US metropolitan areas. Two behaviors are examined: lawn fertilizing and irrigating. Limited support for strong homogenization is found at two scales (i.e., multi- and single-city; 2 of 36 cases), but significant support is found for homogenization at only one scale (22 cases) or at neither scale (12 cases). These results suggest that US lawn care behaviors are more differentiated in practice than in theory. Thus, even if the biophysical outcomes of urbanization are homogenizing, managing the associated sustainability implications may require a multiscale, differentiated approach because the underlying social practices appear relatively varied. The analytical approach introduced here should also be productive for other facets of urban-ecological homogenization

Description

This work was authored as part of the Contributor's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.

Published 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences. The definitive instance can be found on the journal site.

DOI
10.1073/pnas.1323995111
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/11507
Citation Information
Polsky, C., Grove, J. M., Knudson, C., Groffman, P. M., Bettez, N., Cavender-Bares, J., ... & Steele, M. K. (2014). Assessing the homogenization of urban land management with an application to US residential lawn care. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(12), 4432-4437.