Urban Ecology as an Integrative Science and Practice

Abstract

Urban ecology began as a biological science practised within cities. As such, it sought out forests, abandoned or undeveloped land, meadows and surface waters as analogues of the places outside of cities where ecologists had worked for decades. In 1997, the call for proposals by the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) programme for urban research sites required integration of biological and physical structures and processes with social structures and processes. The Baltimore Ecosystem Study, referred to as BES, was one of the two successful responses to that call, and thus worked along with the Central Arizona Phoenix LTER to craft a new, integrated approach to the understanding of urban ecological systems. The conceptual and visionary framework to support this integration is termed 'ecology of the city', which for North America is a new kind of social-ecological- technological systems (SETS) research. The ecology of the city has required BES to establish interactions across disciplinary boundaries, linking with sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, engineering, climatology, public health and urban design. Furthermore, to meet the challenges of the region in which the project is embedded, BES has had to become transdisciplinary, that is to move beyond the scope of individual or even linked scientific disciplines. Transdisciplinary research engages with communities, non-governmental organizations and people from federal, state, county and city governments to answer questions that are of interest to science, while at the same time addressing needs of society. As a result, BES exemplifies growth beyond the traditional disciplinary focus of ecology on biological habitats within urban areas. That growth first linked various social, biological and physical science disciplines and, ultimately, was integrated with policy, management and design concerns. We trace the development of BES to illustrate integrative science and practice.

Citation

Pickett, Steward T.A.; Grove, J. Morgan; LaDeau, Shannon L.; Rosi, Emma J.; Cadenasso, Mary L. 2021. Urban Ecology as an Integrative Science and Practice. Chapter 7 in: Barbosa, Pedro, ed. Urban Ecology-Its Nature and Challenges. CAB International: 122-143. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789242607.0122.