Approximately 75–80% of the population of North America currently lives in urban areas as defined by national census bureaus, and urbanization is continuing to increase. Future trajectories of fossil fuel emissions are associated with a high degree of uncertainty; however, if the activities of urban residents and the rate of urban land conversion can be captured in urban systems models, plausib...

Soil compaction adversely influences most terrestrial ecosystem services on which humans depend. This global problem, affecting over 68 million ha of agricultural land alone, is a major driver of soil erosion, increases flood frequency and reduces groundwater recharge. Agricultural soil compaction has been intensively studied, but there are no systematic studies investigating the extent of comp...

This study aimed to evaluate the co-occurrence of caffeine and the extent of its influence as compared to other traditional water quality parameters (microbiological and physico-chemical) in order to characterize it as an efficient indicator of anthropic pollution of urban aquatic environments. Caffeine is an ingredient in a variety of beverages (coffee, tea, and caffeinated soft drinks) and nu...

Department of Ecology and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China, Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Ø DK-2100, Denmark, Imperial College London, Grand Challenges in Ecosystems & the Environme...

Over the past 20 years, understanding of the functioning of urban ecosystems has increased to the point where fairly sophisticated models of various subsystems have been developed by scientists working for federal, state, and local agencies, often in cooperation with university researchers. Each is designed to collect data and explore a specific urban/environmental system for issues related to ...

Agricultural soil is typically an important component of urban ecosystems, contributing directly or indirectly to the general quality of human life. To understand which factors influence metal accumulation in agricultural soils in urban ecosystems is becoming increasingly important. Land use, soil type and urbanization indicators all account for considerable differences in metal accumulation in...

In the light of ongoing global urbanization and the high pace of resource consumption, there is an urgent need to foster compact cities. Currently, however, we lack integrative guidelines on how to manage trade-offs between urban densification and the provision of green space. Against this background, this study applies the concepts of green infrastructure and ecosystem services to develop a gu...

Urban ecosystem health assessments can be applied extensively in urban management to evaluate the status quo of the urban ecosystem, identify the limiting factors, identify key problems, optimize the scheme and guide ecological regulation. Regarding the multi-layer roles of urban ecosystems, urban ecosystem health should be assessed at different scales with each assessment providing a specific ...