The Effects of Urban Patterns on Ecosystem Function

Urban ecological systems are characterized by complex interactions among social, economic, institutional, and environmental variables. These interactions generate complex human-dominated landscapes, which significantly influence the functioning of local and global earth ecosystems and the services they provide to humans and other life on earth. Urban development fragments, isolates, and degrades natural habitats; simplifies and homogenizes species composition; disrupts hydrological systems; and modifies energy flow and nutrient cycling. Urban areas also appropriate a large share of earth’s carrying capacity from other regions in terms of resource input and waste sinks. Change in ecological conditions that…