Urban Ecology

What is Urban Ecology?

by Conrad J. Storad

Urban adj. [Latin urbanus, from urbs, a city] 1. Of, in, or constituting a city.

Ecology n. [Greek oikos, ‘house’] 1. The branch of biology that deals with the relationships between living things and their environment, including all living and nonliving components.

Ecology is all about relationships. No, not the relationships between boys and girls. It’s bigger than that. Ecology is about studying the relationships between all living and non living things in a particular area. The area might be as big as a forest, a lake, a continent, or the entire planet. Or it might be as small as a single grove a trees, a local pond, or a puddle in your backyard.

Scientists who study ecology once spent most of their time and work in far off, isolated, exotic locations. They studied groves of old trees in the pristine forests of the far Northwest. They studied the plants and animals of the tundra in Alaska or near the Arctic Circle. They went to Antarctica to study penguins and other creatures that live in that icy wasteland. They visited remote islands in the South Pacific. Or they went on expeditions deep into the steaming rainforests of South America.

Today, ecologists stay close to home. They study cities, the places where billions of people interact with living and nonliving things every, single day and night.

In Arizona, ecologists study the types of grasses and trees growing in Phoenix parking lots. They study the birds living in your back yard. They want to know how many and what kind of insects and arachnids live on and around the playground at school. The projects are examples of the new frontier of environmental study. It is called Urban Ecology.

Urban ecologists study people, plants, and animals living in and near cities. More importantly, they study the relationship between all those living things and the nonliving things in and around cities. They study the air and water and soil. They study how people change those nonliving things. And they study how those changes can come back to affect people and other living things.

Phoenix is one of the fastest growing cities in North America. Scientists are concerned about the rapid depletion of its natural desert areas. The pressure continues to build. More people are flocking to live in Phoenix and other cities in the West. Scientists who study the cities have to team up and find ideas that help make them more livable. That is what the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research project based at Arizona State University is all about.

Scientists are learning that cities are interesting environments for study. They have their own types of biodiversity. The more we understand these environments, the better we can protect them. The more we know about the places we live, the easier it will be to make them better places to live.