Ecosystem Services in Agricultural and Urban Landscapes PDF Download

Author: Stephen Wratten
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118506243
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Ecosystem services are the resources and processes supplied by natural ecosystems which benefit humankind (for example, pollination of crops by insects, or water filtration by wetlands). They underpin life on earth, provide major inputs to many economic sectors and support our lifestyles. Agricultural and urban areas are by far the largest users of ecosystems and their services and (for the first time) this book explores the role that ecosystem services play in these managed environments. The book also explores methods of evaluating ecosystem services, and discusses how these services can be maintained and enhanced in our farmlands and cities. This book will be useful to students and researchers from a variety of fields, including applied ecology, environmental economics, agriculture and forestry, and also to local and regional planners and policy makers.

Author: Thomas Elmqvist
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789400770898
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 755

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Book Description
Urbanization is a global phenomenon and the book emphasizes that this is not just a social-technological process. It is also a social-ecological process where cities are places for nature, and where cities also are dependent on, and have impacts on, the biosphere at different scales from local to global. The book is a global assessment and delivers four main conclusions: Urban areas are expanding faster than urban populations. Half the increase in urban land across the world over the next 20 years will occur in Asia, with the most extensive change expected to take place in India and China Urban areas modify their local and regional climate through the urban heat island effect and by altering precipitation patterns, which together will have significant impacts on net primary production, ecosystem health, and biodiversity Urban expansion will heavily draw on natural resources, including water, on a global scale, and will often consume prime agricultural land, with knock-on effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services elsewhere Future urban expansion will often occur in areas where the capacity for formal governance is restricted, which will constrain the protection of biodiversity and management of ecosystem services

Author: J. Blum
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1315341875
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Urban horticulture, referring to the study and cultivation of the relationship between plants and the urban environment, is gaining more attention as the world rapidly urbanizes and cities expand. While plants have been grown in urban areas for millennia, it is now recognized that they not only provide food, ornament, and recreation, but also supply invaluable ecological services that help mitigate potentially negative impacts of urban ecosystems, and thus increase the livability of cities. This book provides background on key issues in this growing field.

Author: Carly Ziter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Unprecedented urban growth has markedly changed ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity, and consequently the ecosystem services our health and wellbeing depend on. To improve urban sustainability, it is important to identify opportunities to manage cities for increased ecosystem service provision. This requires understanding urban areas as spatially heterogeneous and temporally dynamic ecosystems. This dissertation combines synthesis, observational, and experimental approaches to ask how landscape structure, historical land-use, and biodiversity impact multiple ecosystem services in urban landscapes. In chapter 1, I conducted a global meta-analysis focused explicitly on the underlying ecology of urban ecosystem services, centered on the role of biodiversity in service provision. The remaining chapters focus on Madison, WI, and consider how landscape context (Chapter 2, 4) and biological invasion (Chapter 3) may influence ecosystem services in a temperate, mid-size city. Through meta-analysis, I showed that urban biodiversity-ecosystem service research would benefit from increasing the number and types of services assessed, broadening its geographical scope, and expanding types of biodiversity measured - including consideration of non-native species. Using empirical data, I assessed the effect of spatial and temporal context on ecosystem services in Madison, a historically agricultural urban landscape. By measuring biophysical indicators of three services (carbon storage, water quality regulation, runoff regulation), I showed that considering the full mosaic of urban greenspace and its history is needed to estimate the kinds and magnitude of ecosystem services in cities, and to augment regional assessments that may underestimate urban ecosystem service supply. Using a bicycle- mounted temperature sensor, I showed that impervious surfaces and canopy cover interact to affect summer air temperature, and that urban forest management provides a powerful lever to increase temperature regulation services. Understanding invasion-ecosystem service linkages is also important in urban ecosystems - where non-native species are common. I conducted reciprocal field experiments to test whether an incipient urban invader, the Asian jumping worm, might interact with an established invasive, common buckthorn, with consequences for ecosystem services. Contrary to the "invasional meltdown" hypothesis, I found no evidence of co-facilitation, with positive conservation implications. Overall, this research has implications for using urban landscape management to enhance ecosystem service provision

Author: Thomas Elmqvist
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 940077088X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 755

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Book Description
Urbanization is a global phenomenon and the book emphasizes that this is not just a social-technological process. It is also a social-ecological process where cities are places for nature, and where cities also are dependent on, and have impacts on, the biosphere at different scales from local to global. The book is a global assessment and delivers four main conclusions: Urban areas are expanding faster than urban populations. Half the increase in urban land across the world over the next 20 years will occur in Asia, with the most extensive change expected to take place in India and China Urban areas modify their local and regional climate through the urban heat island effect and by altering precipitation patterns, which together will have significant impacts on net primary production, ecosystem health, and biodiversity Urban expansion will heavily draw on natural resources, including water, on a global scale, and will often consume prime agricultural land, with knock-on effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services elsewhere Future urban expansion will often occur in areas where the capacity for formal governance is restricted, which will constrain the protection of biodiversity and management of ecosystem services

Author: Robert A. Francis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317497813
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The growth of cities poses ever-increasing challenges for the natural environment on which they impact and depend, not only within their boundaries but also in surrounding peri-urban areas. Landscape ecology – the study of interactions across space and time between the structure and function of physical, biological and cultural components of landscapes – has a pivotal role to play in identifying sustainable solutions. This book brings together examples of research at the cutting edge of urban landscape ecology across multiple contexts that investigate the state, maintenance and restoration of healthy and functional natural environments across urban and peri-urban landscapes. An explicit focus is on urban landscapes in contrast to other books which have considered urban ecosystems and ecology without specific focus on spatial connections. It integrates research and perspectives from across academia, public and private practitioners of urban conservation, planning and design. It provides a much needed summary of current thinking on how urban landscapes can provide the foundation of sustained economic growth, prospering communities and personal well-being.

Author: Ajith H. Perera
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319745158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Over the last two decades, the topic of forest ecosystem services has attracted the attention of researchers, land managers, and policy makers around the globe. The services rendered by forest ecosystems range from intrinsic to anthropocentric benefits that are typically grouped as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. The research efforts, assessments, and attempts to manage forest ecosystems for their sustained services are now widely published in scientific literature. This volume focuses on broad-scale aspects of forest ecosystem services, beyond individual stands to large landscapes. In doing so, it illustrates the conceptual and practical opportunities as well as challenges involved with planning for forest ecosystem services across landscapes, regions, and nations. The goal here is to broaden the scope of land use planning through the adoption of a landscape-scale approach. Even though this approach is complex and involves multiple ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions, the landscape perspective appears to offer the best opportunity for a sustained provision of forest ecosystem services.

Author: Bianca Maria Rinaldi
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3035617201
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The positive effects of urban green spaces are well-known, ranging from the promotion of health, support of biodiversity to climate regulation. However, the practical implementation of urban landscapes is less discussed. How can we make these spaces functional, economically feasible and inclusive, especially as cities become more diverse? The publication explores strategies to reconcile the various demands, such as food production, resilience and nature conservation. Indeed, urban landscapes have to be restorative, ecological and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. This is a particular challenge in high-density cities like Singapore, Seoul or New York where space is a scarce commodity. The continuing growth of the worldwide urban population imbues the topic with a special urgency.

Author: Jürgen Breuste
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662632799
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This textbook on urban ecosystems answers important questions about the ecological structure, functions and socio-ecological development of cities worldwide. Based on how cities are developing today in an increasingly urbanized world, it explains ecological challenges for cities of the 21st century such as resource efficiency, climate change, moderation of quality of life and resilience. The book combines theories of urban development and ecology with practical applications and case studies, thus identifying potential for improvement and examples of good ecological urban development worldwide. It shows that cities are by far not only problem areas but also offer great potential for a good life and that the various urban ecosystems can make a considerable contribution to this. The "eco-city" is thus not a utopia,but a real goal that can be pursued step by step in a targeted manner, taking into account the local and regional context. Four renowned urban ecologists have contributed their specific experience in sub-areas without losing sight of the big picture. Jürgen Breuste is an urban ecologist and works at the Paris Lodron University in Salzburg, Austria, on the topics of sustainable urban development, urban biodiversity, ecosystem services and eco-cities. Dagmar Haase is Landschaftsökologin and works at the Humboldt University of Berlin on urban ecosystem services and land use modeling. Stephan Pauleit is a landscape planner and works at the Technical University of Munich on strategies for the sustainable development of urban landscapes. Martin Sauerwein is a geographer and works at the University of Hildesheim on geo-ecology in cultural landscapes, geoarchaeology and soil protection. The textbook addresses a broad audience of students, teachersand also to practitioners in the fields of ecology, urban ecology, urban development, sustainability, urban geography, nature and landscape conservation, spatial planning, landscape ecology, social sciences and urban studies. The numerous photos and graphics, many of them in four colors, as well as clear tables illustrate the facts. Case studies, examples and explanations allow a deeper insight. Questions at the end of each chapter allow the progress of knowledge to be checked, and a comprehensive bibliography for each chapter provides further studies.This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Stadtökosysteme by Jürgen Breuste published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2016. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. This springer essential is a translation of the original German 1st edition essentials,Stadtökosysteme by Jürgen Breuste published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2016. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Author: Lothar Mueller
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030674487
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
The book informs about agricultural landscapes, their features, functions and regulatory mechanisms. It characterizes agricultural production systems, trends of their development, and their impacts on the landscape. Agricultural landscapes are multifunctional systems, coupled with all nexus problems of the 21th century. This has led to serious discrepancies between agriculture and environment, and between urban and rural population. The mission, key topics and methods of research in order to understanding, monitoring and controlling processes in rural landscapes is being explained. Studies of international expert teams, many of them from Russia, demonstrate approaches towards both improving agricultural productivity and sustainability, and enhancing ecosystem services of agricultural landscapes. Scientists of different disciplines, decision makers, farmers and further informed people dealing with the evolvement of thriving rural landscapes are the primary audience of this book.