Biodiversity in the City: Fundamental Questions for Understanding the Ecology of Urban Green Spaces for Biodiversity Conservation

As urban areas expand, understanding how ecological processes function in cities has become increasingly important for conserving biodiversity. Urban green spaces are critical habitats to support biodiversity, but we still have a limited understanding of their ecology and how they function to conserve biodiversity at local and landscape scales across multiple taxa. Given this limited view, we discuss five key questions that need to be addressed to advance the ecology of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation and restoration. Specifically, we discuss the need for research to understand how green space size, connectedness, and type influence the community, population, and life-history dynamics of…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 1355151, 1354676, 1215859
• SR
  Sight Research UK

  Award: NE/J015369/1
• BA
  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Awards: NE/J015369/1, NE/J015369/1
• DO
  Division of Environmental Biology