A New View

Hello world! Or at least the five people (not counting my mother) who are reading this blog. This is akin to an experiment for me. As part of my science communication class one task was to create a blog about science / your research. Having never had a blog before I am 1) entering into the 21st century seven years late and 2) hopefully keeping one step ahead of my father in the technology race (we had a long race to see who would be the last person without a cellphone and I barely beat him). So bare with me as I try out this new medium for expression. I normally express myself in densely worded papers that get printed in obscure scientific journals or late at night after too many beers—both not effective means of disseminating clear and convincing ideas.

So a little about myself. I am a graduate student at Cornell University (or as I like to say a small school in NY) in the Department of Natural Resources. I am 25 years old, grew up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, went down south for my undergraduate in biology at Wofford College, and some how found a back door way into a prestigious school (I am in what I call “the Ivy League for Dummies” part). Broadly I study invasive species, which are non-native plants and animals that cause environmental or economic harm. Maybe you have heard of things like Kudzu, Snakeheads, or Zebra Mussels. Being green I guess it was only natural I focused on the plant part. A lot of my research focuses on how human land use influences plant community composition and biological invasions. So I study how your neighborhood, farm, city, favorite mall, or forest influence what plants grow where. So I spend a lot of time out in the field looking for and counting plants (something my brother has repeatedly stated shouldn’t take that long or be hard since plants don’t move!). When I am not in the field I am probably in front of my computer (probably getting cancer) reading papers, entering in data, or surfing the web for useless information. I also spend a lot of time in the library and in a greenhouse (which is nice in the winter). Besides school I love to hike and backpack, am nuts about bicycles, listen to music, read non-science books, and hang out with friends over beers.

Enough boring background about me. Now lets get into what I hope will be an interesting and enlightening discussion about cities. Over the course of my research and travels I have become more and more interested in cities. Growing up in a rural area with mostly farms (first traffic light in town came in the late 1990s), cities were a mixture of both excitement and loathing. Big, bustling, and dynamic they had everything that a person could want. Except maybe for trees, a bay to fish in, or a meadow to talk a long walk through. I saw them as areas apart from nature, so I really cherished living with woods and streams around my home. But that vision began to change as I became more aware about ecosystems and how humans interact with nature. Was nature defined as places without humans or are humans another part of this biologically diverse planet? Can a city be more environmentally friendly than a small house in the country? How do people in cities interact with nature and what species live there? As I was pondering these questions and my point of view so were many scientists. For hundreds of years ecologists had focused on the studying the “wildest” and most “natural” places on earth trying to find explanations for natural phenomenon. As I grew so did a burgeoning awareness that cities are their own type of ecosystems. With this new perspective urban ecology came to be.

Wikipedia gives the stale definition of Urban Ecology as “subfield of ecology which deals with the interaction of plants, animals and humans with each other and with their environment in urban or urbanizing settings”. While this will suffice for an encyclopedic description I prefer ones that are livelier and give a more humanistic approach. I really like this definition by Mark Walbridge in the opening editorial of the scientific journal Urban Ecosystems:

If an ecosystem is defined as a community (in the ecological sense) of living organisms in combination with the physical environment it inhabits, an urban ecosystem is a special case in which Homo sapiens represents the keystone species controlling ecosystem structure and function.

We humans are the keystone species in cities. We determine where a house goes, how much forest to preserve, how many Starbucks to go on each block. We reroute streams, pave over grass, and build tall buildings into the sky. We change landscapes and become the dominant selective pressure and stress in these environments. And this is happening more and more.

Sometime in 2007 a kid was born in Sao Paulo or Tokyo or New York and tipped the scales. Since that point there have been more people living in urban areas than rural areas. This is the first time in the past century that over 50% of the world’s population has lived in cities. And it’s only going to increase. A recent article in Science shows that this trend is going to continue with a prediction of 80% urban population in industrialized nations in 50 years. This graph from Grimm et al. 2008 (Science Vol. 319) shows the rise of both world and US urban populations.

So cities are going to be a part of our landscape and the life of a majority of the world’s population. Odds are you already live in a city now. Some are gigantic like Mexico City and others are smaller like Spartanburg, SC. But they all share many common characteristics that people can learn from. Some of the same ecosystem level processes take place on the paved streets of Boston as they do in Santo Domingo. If more and more people are going to live in cities then cities are probably going to grow in size and importance. It is important for both scientists and policy makers to understand the fundamental ecological properties supporting the functioning of cities.

That’s where this blog is going to try and come in. I have been studying urban ecology for a while now and find it an exciting and diverse field, which has lots to share with the 3.35 billion people who live in urban areas. I want to explain some of the topics that scientist study, help clarify some of the technical jargon, and help educate everyone who reads this blog about urban ecosystems. Topics such as hydrology, climate change, invasive species, biodiversity and others will be covered. I want people who are interested to suggest topics to cover. I will highlight scientists and labs specifically studying urban ecosystems. I also want to help people in cities connect to the environment and will highlight ways and places that they can do this. I will also try to show that even if you do live in a city you are connected to the natural areas and wild ecosystems thousands and thousands of miles away. Lets see what happens with a little Greene in the City!