Most people think of city landscapes as simpler, diminished versions of the wild forests and free-flowing streams found in remote places. But in a series of studies published Sept. 10, 2014 in a special issue of the journal Biogeochemistry , scientists specializing in urban ecosystems say just the opposite is true. Urban landscapes are more complex than they seem, and from coast to coast these ecosystems can work in surprisingly similar ways, regardless of local conditions. And they have the potential to change quickly – for better or worse – depending on how people manage them.
In 14 studies, scientists from across the U.S. examined the impacts of human actions on the geology, chemistry and biology of urban ecosystems. The studies were carried out in a broad range of climates from Boston and Baltimore to San Juan, Puerto Rico;Tucson, Arizona; and Southern California, including sites in the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. Results were published in a special issue of Biogeochemistry exclusively devoted to urban ecosystems, edited by University of Maryland geologist Sujay Kaushal and University of New Hampshire ecologists William McDowell and Wilfred Wollheim.
"Urban ecosystems change relatively quickly in response to human activities," says Kaushal. "These changes can result in rapid losses of ecosystem functions, like flood protection and pollution filtration, or they can result in progress toward ecological health and productivity. The difference depends in large part on how they are managed."
In an overview article, Kaushal, McDowell and Wollheim point out some key factors that affect the evolution of urban ecosystems. For example, the streams, lakes and land surfaces that make up cities' watersheds show consistent patterns of change over time:
"There is a lot of good urban restoration work underway," says McDowell, "but often it only has a short-term effect, because urban watersheds follow their own evolutionary paths. For example, utility managers may build a stormwater retention pond to capture polluted runoff, such as excess nitrogen from urban runoff. And it may work very well for a few years. But then it fills in with sediment, and becomes a wetland, and it's no longer working the way the engineers designed it to work."
"We hope scientists, managers and citizens will work together to make decisions that allow for what we call 'urban evolution,' – that is, changes in the ecology of cities over time, " says Kaushal. "If we do that, we can find effective ways to understand and manage the trajectory of urban ecosystems, from decline towards sustainability."
"This synthesis brings the power of evolutionary biology to understanding ecosystem processes in urban environments, some of the most rapidly changing habitats globally," says Saran Twombly, NSF's LTER program director. "Merging evolutionary biology with ecosystem sciences is an exciting frontier for long-term ecological research, beginning with this issue on biogeochemical cycles."
Copies of all 14 papers in the special issue on urban biogeochemical cycles will be available free of charge for 30 days, beginning September 10, 2014, at the Biogeochemistry website: http://link.springer.com/journal/10533 . For copies of individual articles, email hdewar@umd.edu
The research described in the special issue of Biogeochemistry was funded by the National Science Foundation (DBI 064030 and CBET 1058502) and its Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network, including LTER sites in Baltimore, Md. (DEB-0423476 and DEB-1027188), Plum Island, Mass. (OCE-1238212) and Luquillo, Puerto Rico (DEB-0963447); the NSF Luquillo Critical Zone Observatory (EAR-1331841); the NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPS-1101245); the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station; NASA (Award No. NNX11AM28G); and Maryland Sea Grant (Award Nos. SA7528085-U, NA05OAR4171042 and R/WS-2). The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.
Sujay S. Kaushal, Associate Professor of Geology
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Biogeochemistry