Urban ecology is the study of ecological processes in urban environments. This includes all aspects of the ecology of any organisms found in urban areas as well as large scale considerations of the ecological sustainability of cities.
Urban systems must adapt to climatic and other global change. This Perspective uses urban systems to argue that sustainability and resilience are complementary but not interchangeable and that, in some cases, resilience can even render cities unsustainable.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and other high-level agreements acknowledge the linked nature of social and biophysical systems. This Review explains one research tradition, sociometabolic research, that explores these links. Sociometabolic research uses methods from systems science and allied areas to study the biophysical basis of economic activity. The authors use tangible examples from recent research to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses and then explore future directions.
Bee keeping is on the rise in cities. Beehive products can be used to trace the source and transport of metal contaminants by studying one of our favourite food stuffs — honey.
Despite on-going habitat loss caused by the advance of urbanisation, there are reasons to feel hopeful that cities can be spaces that benefit both biodiversity and human well-being — but it will require cross-sector engagement among ecologists, policymakers and the public.
Urban biodiversity is an unplanned species assemblage. Although promoting native biodiversity should be the primary goal, the built environment often contains optimal habitat for non-natives. With planning and research, we could use cities as semi-natural assurance colonies for endangered species.