Urban Ecosystems as Distinct Urban Biomes
Urban Ecosystems as Distinct Urban Biomes
Urban ecological research has emerged as a dynamic field of investigation that mirrors the shift of humans to cities and the growing understanding of cities as hugely important in global biogeochemical changes. One of the driving questions for this research is how urban ecology can make cities more livable and sustainable and the underlying bedrock of this question is the importance of ecosystem services (ES) for humans, built on the Millennium Assessment Report (MEA). Regulating services seem to be the most prevalent in the ES urban ecology literature, along with cultural services, with some studies covering more than one dimension of ES – or more precisely Urban Ecosystem Services – UES. All of these approaches have been critical in advancing both science and awareness of urban ecosystems, but fall short of acknowledging UES as essentially humanly conditioned and engendered. UES are distinct urban biomes that can be classified by city-type and typologized. The typologies consist of only climate zone, but level of economic development, city size, the history of the transformation of the landscape, urban infrastructure development and the history of urban vegetation.
In this discussion I provide an overview of the historical evolution of nature in cities to the concept of UES, attempts to improve the industrial city through UES from the late 19th century, a discussion of cities as anthropogenic environments shaped by hard and soft infrastructure, and finally some thoughts about how we study urban biomes.