Creating sustainable urban landscapes in light of growing population pressures requires interdisciplinary multi-functional solutions. Alternative agro-ecosystems described as food forests, permaculture gardens, and/or edible among others could offer potential ways to address the social, economic, and ecological goals various stakeholders simultaneously. Current research is lacking a comprehensi...

While effects of urbanization on species assemblages are receiving increasing attention, effects on ecological interactions remain largely unexplored. We investigated how urbanization influences the strength of direct and indirect trophic interactions in a tri- trophic system. In a field experiment including five cities and nearby farmed areas, we used potted Vicia faba plants and manipulated t...

Tropical montane ecosystems of the Andes are critically threatened by a rapid land-use change which can potentially affect stream variables, aquatic communities, and ecosystem processes such as leaf litter breakdown. However, these effects have not been sufficiently investigated in the Andean region and at high altitude locations in general. Here, we studied the influence of land use (forest-pa...

Installation of impervious surfaces in urban areas has attracted increasing attention due to its potential hazard to urban ecosystems. Urban soils are suggested to have robust carbon (C) sequestration capacity; however, the C stocks and dynamics in the soils covered by impervious surfaces that dominate urban areas are still not well characterized. We compared soil organic C (SOC) densities and ...

Patterns of urban development across the United States are changing natural landscapes and their dynamics. Although scholars in landscape ecology are increasingly studying the relationship between urban development and ecological conditions, few have directly addressed the question of how patterns of urban development affect landscape dynamics. In this paper we first propose that landscape patt...

1. The world’s population is increasingly urban, and streams and rivers, as the low lying points of the landscape, are especially sensitive to and profoundly impacted by the changes associated with urbanization and suburbanization of catchments. 2. River restoration is an increasingly popular management strategy for improving the physical and ecological conditions of degraded urban streams. In ...

Snowmelt dominates the hydrograph of many temperate montane streams, yet little work has characterized how streamwater sources and nitrogen (N) dynamics vary across wildland to urban land use gradients in these watersheds. Across a third-order catchment in Salt Lake City, Utah, we asked where and when groundwater vs shallow surface water inputs controlled stream discharge and N dynamics. Stream...

Studies of forests and urban forest ecosystems have documented the various biophysical and socioeconomic correlates of carbon storage. Tree cover in particular is often used as a determinant of carbon storage for local and national level urban forest assessments. However, the relationships among variables describing the biophysical and socioeconomic environment and carbon are not simple statist...

As noted by Charles Redman and Nancy Jones in the background paper, rapid urbanization brings opportunities to new urban developments. But urbanization also comes with serious loss of arable land, degradation of ecosystems as well as social and environmental changes to the urban populations. The current urbanization process in developing countries is indicative of a process that needs considera...