CO2 sensor network shows effects of metro growth

“In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by atmospheric scientists Logan Mitchell and John Lin report that suburban sprawl increases CO2 emissions more than similar population growth in a developed urban core.

“The general thought is that more compact cities on a per capita basis emits less carbon,” Lin says. “Some of these cities also have these expanding fringes. These places are less ‘green’, so to speak. That expanding frontier is moving.””

Published in https://unews.utah.edu/u-co2-sensor-network/

Green spaces in cities help control floods, store carbon

Abstract: "Urban landscapes are increasingly recognized as providing important ecosystem services (ES) to their occupants. Yet, urban ES assessments often ignore the complex spatial heterogeneity and land-use history of cities. Soil-based services may be particularly susceptible to land-use legacy effects. We studied indicators of three soil-based ES, carbon storage, water quality regulation, and runoff regulation, in a historically agricultural urban landscape and asked (1) How do ES indicators vary with contemporary land cover and time since development? (2) Do ES indicators vary primarily among land-cover classes, within land-cover classes, or within sites? (3) What is the relative contribution of urban land-cover classes to potential citywide ES provision? We measured biophysical indicators (soil carbon [C], available phosphorus [P], and saturated hydraulic conductivity [Ks]) in 100 sites across five land-cover classes, spanning an ~125-year gradient of time since development within each land-cover class. Potential for ES provision was substantial in urban green spaces, including developed land. Runoff regulation services (high Ks) were highest in forests; water quality regulation (low P) was highest in open spaces and grasslands; and open spaces and developed land (e.g., residential yards) had the highest C storage. In developed land covers, both C and P increased with time since development, indicating effects of historical land-use on contemporary ES and trade-offs between two important ES. Among-site differences accounted for a high proportion of variance in soil properties in forests, grasslands, and open space, while residential areas had high within-site variability, underscoring the leverage city residents have to improve urban ES provision. Developed land covers contributed most ES supply at the citywide scale, even after accounting for potential impacts of impervious surfaces. Considering the full mosaic of urban green space and its history is needed to estimate the kinds and magnitude of ES provided in cities, and to augment regional ES assessments that often ignore or underestimate urban ES supply."

Ziter, C. and Turner, M. G. (2018), Current and historical land use influence soil-based ecosystem services in an urban landscape. Ecological Applications. doi: 10.1002/eap.1689

New York Metropolitan Flora project

In 1990 the Brooklyn Botanic Garden embarked on the New York Metropolitan Flora project (NYMF), a multiyear effort to document the flora in all counties within a 50-mile radius of New York City, including all of Long Island, southeastern New York State, northern New Jersey and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Garden staff collect woody plant data and have created an online encyclopedia that shows plant data and maps of the New York metro region. For more on this project or to view the encyclopedia, visit https://www.bbg.org/collections/nymf

What should grow in a vacant lot?

Baltimore biologist Chris Swan says  “I have a PhD in biology, not human relations”. He is referring  to how neighbors of his vacant lot study plots react to his numerous wildflower seedings across West Baltimore. Chris is trying to understand which species do best on abandoned property soil types. You can read about more of this research at:
https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/02/what-should-grow-in-a-vacant-lot/552671/

One's trash is another's septic buffet

Researchers at Yale and Portland State Universities conducted a study of the effects of fertilizers on ponds in residential areas. They found that human waste from septic systems were not only contributing nitrogen to the ponds, but that pond organisms were primarily feeding from it. Max Lambert, one of the paper's co-authors stated "“Our study highlights that, by choosing to live in and landscape particular places, human neighborhoods are creating fundamentally unique ecosystems by changing how water and food move around, and even what kind of food is available. Suburban animals behave, look, and function differently because of this”

More on this story at Yale News at https://news.yale.edu/2017/12/11/study-suburban-ponds-are-septic-buffet

Wait, wait....don't clean that street gutter!

“In most cities, streets are designed for collecting and transporting dirt, litter, debris, storm water and other wastes as a municipal sanitation system. Microbial mats can develop on street surfaces and form microbial communities that have never been described. Here, we performed the first molecular inventory of the street gutter-associated eukaryotes across the entire French capital of Paris and the non-potable waters sources. We found that the 5782 OTUs (operational taxonomic units) present in the street gutters which are dominated by diatoms (photoautotrophs), fungi (heterotrophs), Alveolata and Rhizaria, includes parasites, consumers of phototrophs and epibionts that may regulate the dynamics of gutter mat microbial communities. Network analyses demonstrated that street microbiome present many species restricted to gutters, and an overlapping composition between the water sources used for street cleaning (for example, intra-urban aquatic networks and the associated rivers) and the gutters. We propose that street gutters, which can cover a significant surface area of cities worldwide, potentially have important ecological roles in the remediation of pollutants or downstream wastewater treatments, might also be a niche for growth and dissemination of putative parasite and pathogens.”

From: Aquatic urban ecology at the scale of a capital: community structure and interactions in street gutters

by Vincent Hervé, Boris Leroy, Albert Da Silva Pires & Pascal Jean Lopez

The ISME Journal 

doi:10.1038/ismej.2017.166

Urban Bird Feeders Dominated by a Few Species and Individuals

“Our study highlights that individual and species-specific differences in feeder use are present within feeder-visiting bird communities, importantly demonstrating this across seasons within an urban system. These intraspecific and interspecific asymmetries support the likelihood of competitive interactions operating to regulate access to food, and suggest that the effects of supplementary feeding are unlikely to be equivalent across all birds within communities of feeder visitors. In New Zealand resource dominance by introduced species is particularly important, with negative outcomes for native species conservation in cities possible. Individual differences in feeder use observed here are likely to affect the population-level impacts of bird feeding, and consequently should be considered in future studies of garden bird feeding.”

"Urban Bird Feeders Dominated by a Few Species and Individuals"

Josie A. Galbraith, Darryl N. Jones, Jacqueline R. Beggs, Katharina Parry and Margaret C. Stanley

Front. Ecol. Evol., 02 August 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2017.00081