Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach

Understanding Urban Ecology

An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach
 
Edition number: 1st ed. 2019
Publisher: Springer
Date of Publication:
Number of Volumes: 1 pieces, Book w. online files / update
 
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Product details:

ISBN13:9783030112585
ISBN10:3030112586
Binding:Hardback
No. of pages:360 pages
Size:235x155 mm
Weight:740 g
Language:English
Illustrations: 38 Illustrations, black & white; 63 Illustrations, color; 68 Tables, color
115
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Short description:

Over half of the world?s population now lives in urban areas. Few who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators, and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more sustainable or ?green? future. The authors use a systems approach to explore the complexity and interactions of different components of a city?s ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of urban ecosystem structure and function.
The chapters describe one by one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their individual components and functions, and the interactions among them that create the social-ecological environments in which we live. The book?s emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity, potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability.

Long description:
Over half of the world?s population now lives in urban areas. Few who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators, and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more sustainable or ?green? future. The authors use a systems approach to explore the complexity and interactions of different components of a city?s ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of urban ecosystem structure and function.
The chapters describe one by one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their individual components and functions, and the interactions among them that create the social-ecological environments in which we live. The book?s emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity, potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Section I: Systems Approaches to Understanding How our Cities Work and Assessing Potentially More Sustainable Ways of Managing the Environment on Which We Depend

1. What Is Urban Ecology and Why Should We Study It?
2. Urban Ecology from a Biophysical and Systems Perspective
3. Social Processes, Urban Ecosystems and Sustainability

Section II: The City in History

4. Scale and Metabolism in Ancient Cities
5. Economy and Development in Modern Cities

Section III: Urban Ecological Systems ? Structure, Function, Controls, and Impacts on Social-Ecological Metabolism

6. The Urban Hydrological System
7.The Climate System
8. The Atmospheric System: Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases
9. Nutrient Biogeochemistry of Urban Systems
10. Material Cycles
11. The Biological System: Plants in the Urban Environment
12. The Biological System: Urban Wildlife, Adaptation and Evolution; Urbanization as a Driver of Contemporary Evolution in Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis)
13. Environmental Justice in the Urban Environment

Section IV: Designing Solutions to Deal with Impacts of Urbanization  ? Past, Present, and Future

14. Urban Food Systems
15. Urban Design Toward More Holistic Systems: Improving Discipline Integration and Sustainability Evaluation
16. The Epilogue