Urban Ecology Study Witnessing the Birth of a 'Designer Ecosystem'

When Arizona State University’s Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research Project (CAP LTER) was funded by the National Science Foundation in 1997, more than 50 scientists signed on to do the multidisciplinary research knowing that they were embarking on something unusual - the first ever long-term ecological study of “a human-dominated ecosystem,” aka, a city.