REVIEW: Managing urban ecosystems for goods and services

Abstract

Summary1. Concomitant with the rise in the proportion of the global human population that resides in urban areas has been growth in awareness of the importance of the provision of ecosystem goods and services to those people. Urban areas are themselves of significance in this regard because of their areal extent, and hence the quantity of services falling within their bounds, and because of the need for local provision of services to urban residents. 2. Here, we review key challenges to the effective management of ecosystem goods and services within urban areas. 3. These challenges include the structure of green space, its temporal dynamics, spatial constraint on ecosystem service flows, occurrence of novel forms of flows, large numbers of land managers, conflicting management goals, possible differences between perceptions of urban dwellers and the reality of the distribution and flow of ecosystem services, and the 'wicked' nature of the problem of ecosystem service management. 4. Synthesis and applications. Urban areas present very particular combinations of challenges and opportunities for the management of ecosystem goods and services. The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of green spaces greatly complicates the maintenance and improvement in service provision as well as dramatically inflating costs. Spatial constraints on ecosystem service flows mean that these can be highly dependent on the maintenance of particular areas of connectivity, but also that provision of additional key points of connectivity may be disproportionately beneficial to those flows. The existence of novel forms of flows of ecosystem services in urban areas offers means of overcoming spatial constraints on more natural flows, but will require the development of new kinds of ecosystem process models to inform their design and management. The large numbers of land managers, conflicts between the best approaches for managing for different goods and services, and frequent differences between the perceptions of urban dwellers and the reality of urban landscapes create a complex management context. The management of ecosystem goods and services is closely allied to the challenges of conventional urban planning. However, applied ecology has a broad range of tools available to assist in determining solutions, including the use of high-resolution remote sensing techniques, landscape ecology principles and theory (e.g. patch and matrix frameworks, meta-population models), and systematic conservation planning approaches.

Habitat complexity influences fine scale hydrological processes and the incidence of stormwater runoff in managed urban ecosystems

“…6) and evapotranspiration, indirectly reducing rainfall input and runoff. High-complexity habitat patches would be largely self-sustaining and internally maintained through the ecological interactions between vegetation, soils, litter and living organisms (Gaston et al, 2013). Therefore, a more pronounced ecological management of urban habitats that draws upon the natural ecosystem processes (McDonnell and Pickett, 1990) could result in substantial savings in terms of ongoing maintenance costs over both short and long term timespans.…”

“…Management practices (or lack of) can alter directly or indirectly each of these system components, determining changes in the overall complexity of urban habitats (Byrne, 2007;Gaston et al, 2013), and therefore directly impacting on the local hydrological processes (Fig.1).…”

Landscape Fragmentation and Ecosystem Services: A Reply to Andrieu et al.

“…The spatial scale considered is also important. Looking across broad spatial scales, urban areas do indeed provide multiple ESs [4]. However, [ 2 _ T D $ D I F F ] these ES are supplied by areas of natural capital: urban parks, street trees, and private yards that are embedded within the urban matrix.…”

Seasonal spatial pattern of soil respiration in a temperate urban forest in Beijing

“…Moreover, urban forests are subjected to human disturbance (e.g. pruning, irrigation, litter removal) and are manipulated with conflicting management goals (Gaston et al, 2013). Studies examining net effectiveness of urban forest maintenance practices are critical to the accurate evaluation and the development of appropriate forest management strategies aimed at mitigating climate change.…”

“…It is against the background of the swift growth of the urban population and the rapid expansion and regional densification of urban areas (United Nations, 2010), together with the need for better habitat and sustainable development, that the ecosystem services of green spaces are of increasing concern (Gaston et al, 2013). For example, recent research has demonstrated that urban areas are capable of storing much larger quantities of carbon than previously realized (Nowak and Crane, 2002;Scharenbroch, 2012;Nowak et al, 2013;Edmondson et al, 2014), which means they can make a greater contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation.…”