A Socio-Ecological Approach to Landscape Fragmentation and Development in Central New Mexico

The Long Term Ecological Research Network established a plan for "Integrative Science for Society and Environment (ISSE)," in 2007. As part of that process, they developed an "Iterative Conceptual Framework" to model links between biophyscial processes and socio-cultural processes. One part of that framework, the Socio-cultural economic template, contains both human behavioral responses, with inputs from changes in ecosystem services and outputs as press and pulse disturbances that impact the biophysical system. Currently we are developing a research program that incorporates and expands upon the socio-cultural template in the original ISSE framework. Using landscape ecology metrics, we report first on how land fragmentation has occurred along the Rio Grande through the Albuquerque metropolitan area. Results demonstrate that fragmentation proceeds along constrained paths and that the primary driver is population growth. From the social sciences perspective, we are now investigating how to explain those paths and the behavior of that driver as an emergent outcome of socio-cultural process along a historical and political trajectory. To develop this expanded framework, our research now focuses on the first inflection point in the Albuquerque population logistic growth curve, roughly from 1950 to 1970. Results of the research are presented as a nonlinear dynamic case study. For example, the curve requires analysis in terms of multiple streams of demand, some locally generated and some a function of national trends, together with the process by which supply was created within constraints set by physical geography, Native American lands, prior ownership, and city politics. Economic and political changes co-occurred with population growth and led to policies to "mainstream" the city. And growth produced a reaction that created an environmental politics that led to comprehensive planning. Explaining the population growth driver in socio-cultural terms requires a transdisciplinary social research model compatible with the original ISSE framework.