Increased population pressure and human activities have significantly altered the effectiveness of functions of ecosystems ("ecosystem services") at the local and regional scale. Of primary importance is the decrease in water quality due to urban storm water runoff. A number of communities have initiated restoration strategies to improve water quality standards. One such strategy is the incorpo...

urban environments rely on the surrounding natural ecosystems remnants as providers of ecosystemfunctions, therefore these areas not only support a unique biodiversity but also have a social value for maintainingpublic health andwellbeing. for this reason, urbanization is considered to be one the biggest threats to ecosystems,leading to native biodiversity simplification and, thus, to a detrime...

The concept of social production and management of urban ecosystems may be understood as the generationof newphysical or relational situations, by constructing, transformingor eliminatingphysical and/or relational objects or ensuring the fulfillment of their social and environmental functions. This includes the citizen participation in the process of urban planning and transformation, forming a...

Recent decades have seen an expanding literature exploring urban energy and material flows, loosely branded as urban metabolism analysis. However, this has occurred largely in parallel to the mainstream studies of cities as ecosystems. This paper aims to conceptually bridge these two distinctive fields of research, by (a) identifying the common aspects between them; (b) identifying key characte...

Wetland ecosystems, particularly the mangrove forest, are the primary wild habitat of heronry birds. However, urban ecosystems have become a favorite breeding habitat of these birds. To provide inputs into the habitat management for conservation of these birds, we investigated the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of nesting trees of heronry birds in the urban environment of the Nort...

Urban land cover/use changes like urbanization and urban sprawl have been impacting the urban ecosystems significantly therefore determination of urban land cover/use changes is an important task to understand trends and status of urban ecosystems, to support urban planning and to aid decision-making for urban-based projects. High resolution satellite images could be used to accurately, periodi...