R. ARROWSMITH/ASU

Some ecologists will have to hang up their hip waders and start pounding the pavement. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is expected to announce next week that it will fund two new sites for long-term ecology studies in--of all places--the booming metropolises of Baltimore and Phoenix.

The awards grew out of a review panel's recommendation in 1993 that NSF's $12 million, 18-site Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network pay more attention to human impacts. As part of its response, NSF is creating two LTER sites to pick up on urban ecology, a field in which U.S. researchers have lagged far behind Europeans. Such studies examine how trees help reduce air pollution, for instance, and investigate park designs that favor native species over exotic invaders.

But the new LTERs--each funded for 6 years at $8.6 million, roughly half from NSF and half from universities and other agencies--plan to go further. "We're trying to understand how entire cities as ecosystems work," explains Arizona State University's Nancy Grimm, co-director of the Phoenix site. The two teams--which include ecologists, social scientists, and geologists--will study plant and animal populations and the flux of nutrients between air, land, and water across neighborhoods, city parks, and even golf courses. "It's the same thing ecologists do anywhere, but you pay more attention to people as animals and as social organisms," says Steward Pickett of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, head of the Baltimore site.