The field of urban ecology has seen a major expansion in the last two decades. As the world rapidly urbanizes, human settlements constitute one of the few ecosystems on earth that are significantly increasing in their extent. As a result, interest from both the scientific community and society at large has turned its attention to the functioning of cities and their impacts on larger regions, gl...

introduction the urban population experienced rapid growth in the recent decades, particularly between 1975 and 2000 when it has reached from 1.5 to more than 2 billion people. by turn of the century; half of the world's populations are concentrated in cities. this would severely affect the quality of life in urban areas. accordingly, cities will be faced with significant challenges in inf...

www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America I proposing the ecosystem as an organizational framework, Tansley (1935) explicitly included the effects of humans. When asking, “Is man part of ‘nature’ or not?”, Tansley concluded that “human activity finds its proper place in ecology”. Nowhere is the human–nature interface more unmistakable than in urban ecosystems, and urban eco...

Acknowledgments This project has been supported primarily by Cook County (Illinois) Animal Control, with special support from the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC). In particular, we would like to thank Dr. Dan Parmer for his support. Chris Anchor, FPDCC, has provided invaluable assistance with many aspects of the project. Rob Erickson was co...

Most of the global human population lives in urban areas where biogeochemical cycles are controlled by complex interactions between society and the environment. Urban ecology is an emerging discipline that seeks to understand these interactions, and one of the grand challenges for urban ecologists is to develop models that encompass the myriad influences of people on biogeochemistry. We suggest...

Urbanization has become a dominant driver of landscape transformation across the world, with cities representing centers economic and socio-cultural development [...]

Cities present significant opportunities for new landscape perspectives that can help inform conservation and development decisions. Early in the twenty-first century, the majority of the planet’s population became urban as more people lived in city-regions for the first time in our history. As the global population increases, so does this urbanization. The environmental challenges of populatio...