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Landscapes and human behavior
August 10, 2006On Arizona State University's (ASU) Polytechnic campus, graduate student families in the cluster of six houses abutting lush lawns and ornamental bushes spend time together talking while their kids play outside. Meanwhile, the families in a nearby cluster of six homes barely know each other. But that may be in part because their homes sit on native Sonoran desert, not nearly as conducive to recreation as the lush microclimate researchers created in the first neighborhood. Social scientists and biophysical ecologists are finding that environmental surroundings may play a significant role in human social interaction, serving either as a social lubricant as in the first case, or as a barrier.
David Casagrande (Western Illinois University) and Scott Yabiku (ASU) and colleagues are part of the Central Arizona-Phoenix long term ecological research project. In 2004 and early 2005, the researchers installed residential landscapes at 24 of about 152 virtually identical housing units in the "North Desert Village" of ASU's campus. The scientists selected five "mini neighborhoods" (groups of six houses) and altered four of them, leaving the fifth as a control with no landscaping. The four landscaping styles were:
- mesic: shade trees and turf grass, dependent upon flood irrigation for their high water demands
- oasis: a mixture of high and low water-use plans and sprinkler-irrigated turf grass
- xeric: low water-use plants (both native and non-native), individually drip-watered
- native: Sonoran Desert plants and no supplemental water
"We wanted to explore how the surrounding landscape affects people, both in terms of their perceptions and their behavior," explains Yabiku. "Since human behavior ultimately transforms the environment, the feedback people get from their surroundings is important to understand."
The spectacular growth of Phoenix-which doubled twice in population size in the past 35 years-gives researchers a unique opportunity to monitor human-induced ecological transformations.
"Experimental approaches are rarely used in studies of human-environment interactions,' says Casagrande. "By combining research approaches from both the social and biophysical sciences, we can gain new insights into how peoples' surroundings affect them.\\\
Ecological Society of America
- oasis: a mixture of high and low water-use plans and sprinkler-irrigated turf grass
- xeric: low water-use plants (both native and non-native), individually drip-watered
- native: Sonoran Desert plants and no supplemental water
"We wanted to explore how the surrounding landscape affects people, both in terms of their perceptions and their behavior," explains Yabiku. "Since human behavior ultimately transforms the environment, the feedback people get from their surroundings is important to understand."
The spectacular growth of Phoenix-which doubled twice in population size in the past 35 years-gives researchers a unique opportunity to monitor human-induced ecological transformations.
"Experimental approaches are rarely used in studies of human-environment interactions,' says Casagrande. "By combining research approaches from both the social and biophysical sciences, we can gain new insights into how peoples' surroundings affect them.\\\
Ecological Society of America
Human Behavior Current Events and Human Behavior News RSS'Culture of we' buffers genetic tendency to depression
A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern University study.
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National Science Foundation awards grants for studies of coupled natural and human systems
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Lifestyle interventions in the prevention and treatment of cancer
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Machines can't replicate human image recognition, yet
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Early fire use ignites discussion about the evolution of human brainpower
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