This Is Auburn Center for Environmental Studies at the Urban-Rural Interface

Objectives

 

The Center for Environmental Studies at the Urban-Rural Interface (CESURI) seeks to enhance and facilitate linkages among research and education activities that focus on comparability between natural resources and urban expansion at regional, national, or international scales. The Center fosters interdisciplinary efforts that integrate biological and socioeconomic issues. The CESURI functions as a primary interface between society and natural resources issues which directly influence our quality of life.

Our goal is to help provide answers to one of the most critical issues facing humanity, the impact of expanding human populations on natural resources. We use interdisciplinary research and outreach and education tools to accomplish the following:

  • Understand the influences of urban development on biodiversity, water quality, vegetation dynamics, sociology, economics and human health across forested landscapes at regional, national and global scales. 
  • Develop research techniques that facilitate integrated study of biological, environmental, and socioeconomic effects of urban development. 
  • Develop predictive and management tools that will permit the anticipation and remediation of impacts related to future land development scenarios. 

Urban growth is an ecological and human issue that is inextricably linked. To meet our goals, the CESURI fosters transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research approaches to address pertinent issues related to the urban-rural interface. Further details regarding this research philosophy are provided in:


Lockaby, B.G., D. Zhang, J. McDaniel, H. Tian, and S. Pan. 2005. Interdisciplinary research at the urban-rural interface: WestGA project. Urban Ecosystems 8:7-21. 

Nagy, R.C. and B.G. Lockaby. 2010. Urbanization in the Southeastern United States: socioeconomic forces and ecological responses along an urban-rural gradient. Urban Ecosystems: DOI 10.1007/s11252-010-0143-6.