Development impact on Natural ecosystems is especially a major problem in the developing world. This mainly due to rapid urban developments and inadequate concern of managing natural ecosystems. Urban peri- terrain are most vulnerable ecosystems, facing this predicament. research investigates, using remote sensing field, ecological deterioration neglect urbanization process. In Sri Lanka, field...

Learning to appreciate novel ecosystems will take practice and, as we argue in this chapter, perhaps some new approaches to valuing them. The challenge is not in learning to value novel ecosystems for the first time. After all, as Jackson (Chapter 7) notes, novel ecosystems are nothing new. Significant new ecological assemblies have arisen throughout the past. What is different now is the pace ...

In summer of 2014 the city of Münster experienced an urban flash flood not seen before with such intensity in Germany. This paper investigates the subsequent governmental and ad-hoc community response actions with a focus on the chronologies of Facebook and Twitter usage. Interviews identified drawbacks of coordinating volunteers in social media ecosystems. Possible solutions to overcome issues...

Studies have documented many biophysical factors that are correlated with urban forest carbon storage. This urban forest function is also increasingly being promoted as a nature-based solution for cities. While urbanization affects both the structure and function of urban forest ecosystems, quantitative analyses of specific casual drivers of carbon storage in urban versus peri-urban forests are...

Aquatic ecosystems are often contaminated by multiple substances. Nitrate, a common aquatic pollutant, strongly influenced the cycling of arsenic (As) under anoxic conditions in urban Upper Mystic Lake (Massachusetts, USA) by oxidizing ferrous iron [Fe(II)] to produce As-sorbing particulate hydrous ferric oxides and causing the more oxidized As(V), which is more particle-reactive than As(III) u...

Reducing the hydrologic effects and pollutant loadings from urban drainage systems and restoring aquatic habitats to improve the health of our aquatic ecosystems presents many unique challenges. These challenges can be categorized as technical, institutional, financial, and cultural. This paper will examine each of the challenges and the tools that have and are being developed to overcome them....

Urbanization is a global multidimensional process that manifests itself through rapidly changing human population densities and changing land cover. The growth of cities is due to a combination of four forces: natural growth, rural to urban migration, massive migration due to extreme events, and redefinitions of administrative boundaries. Half of the world’s population today lives in urban area...

Results from Prior Support The Central Arizona Phoenix Project Long Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) award (DEB 9714833-010) provided seed funds to initiate a long term experiment on trophic dynamics in urban settings in 2001. CAP LTER is one of 24 long-term sites funded by NSF. In the past, LTER sites have focused upon pristine locations, well removed from the myriad effects brought about b...