RESEARCH
One hallmark of the Anthropocene are ever tighter feedbacks between natural and social systems. My research attempts to understand the diversity of ways in which we shape and are shaped by our environment in order to inform our dynamic stewardship of nature.
I focus specifically on urban ecosystems, which provide a dense and fascinating socio-ecological mosaic where we rely on plant communities to provide a diversity of functions, but where ecosystems are also disproportionately affected by us. I use observational, experimental and data synthesis approaches to find out what kind of urban nature we want, and what kind of urban nature it is possible to have. I believe that the intersection between these two questions provides the policy space within which conservation can happen, and answering them can help us identify sustainable, resilient and equitable pathways for urban environmental management in a changing world. I focus specifically on using, testing and improving the tools provided by functional ecology in order to answer these questions in a way that is generalizable across cities and continents.
What kind of urban nature do we want?
Biodiversity is changing everywhere. The same urban woodlands that provide critical ecosystem services to increasingly urban populations are also devalued for lacking ecological integrity. This is the paradox and challenge of managing nature for diverse values. To support the sustainable, equitable and pluralistic management of urban forests, I investigate the diversity of environmental goals that people have in cities and ask if and when trade-offs exist among them, like ecological integrity and ecosystem functioning.
What kind of urban nature can we have?
Urban ecosystems are shaped by the biogeographical context in which a city has evolved, but they also depend in large part on urban structure and human processes. Given these additional constraints, there is no reason to assume that all historical ecological communities will be equally suited to the new urban environment, and good reason to expect novel niches to appear as a result of urbanization. It is an open question to what extent the new range of ecologically possible states overlaps with historical conditions across cities and continents. I use plant functional traits as a common denominator from which to begin to seek generality in plant species and community response to environmental change associated with city life.
Closing the loop:
people-nature feedbacks over time
Whether or not urban development is sustainable depends on how feedbacks between people and nature play out over time. In cities, we are making tremendous progress understanding how people and nature vary and interact over space, but temporal dynamics remain largely under-studied. Using historical sources like photographs and census data, I investigate how urban nature has changed over time and whether environmental legacies can explain ecological as well as social outcomes today. With this work, I aim to find sustainable pathways to environmental justice and urban nature management.
This research has been made possible by partnerships with
And the (past & present) generous support of
