Integrating material and symbolic environments with remotely-sensed imagery: the case of US/Mexico borderlands
Marlkus
Nils
Peterson, Michigan State University, peter529@msu.edu
(Presenting)
Andres
Vina, Michigan State University, vina@msu.edu
Jianguo
Liu, Michigan State University, jliu@panda.msu.edu
Unsustainable development is acute on borders between comparatively affluent and poor nations, where long-time residents and immigrant populations are prone to differential treatment, access to political systems, and conceptions of the environment. This context has implications in a globalizing world with implementation of international policy. Trans-boundary environments represent some of the greatest opportunities and threats for humanity. The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV; the southernmost 250 km on the Texas-Tamaulipas [Mexico] border) provides an excellent site to study the influence of coupled human-environment systems on sustainability of borderlands. Our project is evaluating the effects of NAFTA on primary productivity and land use in the LRGV, assessing public perceptions of threats to sustainability, identifing key attributes associated with public participation in land use planning, and will spatio-temporal dynamics of human-environment relationships under different policy scenarios. This poster presents preliminary results from our social survey and describes proposed methods for using a systems approach to integrate material environments, assessed via remote sensing, and symbolic environments, assessed via the social survey. Most (82.4%) respondents thought there were important environmental problems, but only 10% of our respondents had participated in political processes to address them. Hispanics and highly educated respondents were most likely to participate in those processes. Public concern about environmental problems was spatially linked to point sources for air and water pollution. Future findings should facilitate the identification of priority areas for land acquisition to protect endangered species, explicate linkages between social and environmental systems in trans-boundary contexts, and facilitate scaling up the project to support national and global decision making in similar trans-boundary contexts.