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Direct and indirect effects of urbanization on soil and plant nutrients in desert ecosystems of the Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona (USA)

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Abstract

Desert landscaping has become a dominant land cover type in arid US cities and often includes native plant species. Does replacement of native plant distribution in urban areas also reestablish ecological functioning characteristic of natural deserts? We compared ecological processes in three landscape types that are common to the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona (USA): residential desert yards created from former lawns, Sonoran Desert preserves within the city, and Sonoran Desert preserves outside the city boundaries. Canopy cover, abundance of herbivorous insects, and soil properties (concentration of inorganic nitrogen (N), soil moisture and organic matter content, and water-holding capacity) were higher in residential desert yards than in native desert sites located both within and outside of the city. Furthermore, soil resources in desert yards were not organized around plant canopies, departing from the predictable resource island pattern that is characteristic of natural deserts. Intentional human manipulation and land use history accounts for these differences, while the urban environment contributes only subtly to soil N concentrations beneath plant canopies. While the use of desert landscaping may have important water conservation benefits, it does not help to mitigate the well-documented excess of reactive N within the Phoenix metropolitan area.

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Acknowledgments

We thank B. Ahmed, E. Hagen, T.K. Harms, D. Huber, C. Kochert, M. McCrackin, P. Ortiz, V. Pabedinskas, L. Taylor-Taft, and C.Wong for field and laboratory help, without whom this project would not have been possible. Thank you also to J.M. Briggs and A.P. Kinzig for their guidance and thoughtful comments. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. DEB-0423704, Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER), and grant no. DGE-0504248, Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) in Urban Ecology. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendation expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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  1. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-4501, USA

    Rachel Davies & Sharon J. Hall

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  1. Rachel Davies
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  2. Sharon J. Hall
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Correspondence to Sharon J. Hall.

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Davies, R., Hall, S.J. Direct and indirect effects of urbanization on soil and plant nutrients in desert ecosystems of the Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona (USA). Urban Ecosyst 13, 295–317 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-010-0120-0

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