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Moving Towards a New Urban Systems Science

  • 20th Anniversary Paper
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Abstract

Research on urban ecosystems rapidly expanded in the 1990s and is now a central topic in ecosystem science. In this paper, we argue that there are two critical challenges for ecosystem science that are rooted in urban ecosystems: (1) predicting or explaining the assembly and function of novel communities and ecosystems under altered environmental conditions and (2) refining understanding of humans as components of ecosystems in the context of integrated social-ecological systems. We assert that these challenges are also linchpins in the further development of sustainability science and argue that there is a strong need for a new initiative in urban systems science to address these challenges and catalyze the next wave of fundamental advances in ecosystem science, and more broadly in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors acknowledge support from the NSF Long Term Ecological Research Program for work in Baltimore (DEB-1027188) and Phoenix (DEB-1026865), from the NSF Urban Resilience to Extreme Weather-related Events Sustainability Research Network (URExSRN; SES-1444755), and from the NSF Urban Sustainability Research Coordination Network (RCN-1140070).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center and Brooklyn College, New York, New York, 10031, USA

    Peter M. Groffman

  2. Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, California, 95616, USA

    Mary L. Cadenasso

  3. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 55108, USA

    Jeannine Cavender-Bares & Sarah E. Hobbie

  4. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA

    Daniel L. Childers

  5. School of Life Sciences and Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA

    Nancy B. Grimm

  6. USDA Forest Service, Baltimore Field Station, Baltimore, Maryland, 21228, USA

    J. Morgan Grove

  7. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, USA

    Lucy R. Hutyra

  8. Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, California, 92521, USA

    G. Darrel Jenerette

  9. Urban Ecology Lab, Environmental Studies Program, The New School, New York, New York, 10003, USA

    Timon McPhearson

  10. Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84112, USA

    Diane E. Pataki

  11. Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, New York, 12545, USA

    Steward T. A. Pickett & Emma Rosi-Marshall

  12. USDA Forest Service, Research and Development, District of Columbia, Washington, 20502, USA

    Richard V. Pouyat

  13. School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, 86001, USA

    Benjamin L. Ruddell

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  1. Peter M. Groffman
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  2. Mary L. Cadenasso
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  3. Jeannine Cavender-Bares
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  4. Daniel L. Childers
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  5. Nancy B. Grimm
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  6. J. Morgan Grove
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  7. Sarah E. Hobbie
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  8. Lucy R. Hutyra
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  9. G. Darrel Jenerette
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  10. Timon McPhearson
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  11. Diane E. Pataki
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  12. Steward T. A. Pickett
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  13. Richard V. Pouyat
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  14. Emma Rosi-Marshall
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  15. Benjamin L. Ruddell
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter M. Groffman.

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Author contributions

Peter M. Groffman wrote the first draft of the paper based on input from numerous colleagues in the Baltimore and Phoenix U.S. National Science Foundation Funded Urban Long Term Ecological Research projects. Other authors reviewed the manuscript and provided text on specific aspects.

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Groffman, P.M., Cadenasso, M.L., Cavender-Bares, J. et al. Moving Towards a New Urban Systems Science. Ecosystems 20, 38–43 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-016-0053-4

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