Conservation in urban areas typically focuses on biodiversity and large green spaces. However, opportunities exist throughout urban areas to enhance ecological functions. An important function of urban landscapes is retaining nitrogen thereby reducing nitrate pollution to streams and coastal waters. Control of nonpoint nitrate pollution in urban areas was originally based on the documented importance of riparian zones in agricultural and forested ecosystems. The watershed and boundary frameworks have been used to guide stream research and a riparian conservation strategy to reduce nitrate pollution in urban streams. But is stream restoration and riparian-zone conservation enough? Data from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study and other urban stream research indicate that urban riparian zones do not necessarily prevent nitrate from entering, nor remove nitrate from, streams. Based on this insight, policy makers in Baltimore extended the conservation strategy throughout larger watersheds, attempting to restore functions that no longer took place in riparian boundaries. Two urban revitalization projects are presented as examples aimed at reducing nitrate pollution to stormwater, streams, and the Chesapeake Bay. An adaptive cycle of ecological urban design synthesizes the insights from the watershed and boundary frameworks, from new data, and from the conservation concerns of agencies and local communities. This urban example of conservation based on ameliorating nitrate water pollution extends the initial watershed-boundary approach along three dimensions: 1) from riparian to urban land-water-scapes; 2) from discrete engineering solutions to ecological design approaches; and 3) from structural solutions to inclusion of individual, household, and institutional behavior.
Abstract. To promote urban sustainability and resilience, there is an increasing demand for actionable science that links science and decision making based on social-ecological knowledge. Approaches, frameworks, and practices for such actionable science are needed and have only begun to emerge. We propose that approaches based on the co-design and co-production of knowledge can play an essential role to meet this demand. Although the antecedents for approaches to the co-design and co-production of knowledge are decades old, the integration of science and practice to advance urban sustainability and resilience that we present is different in several ways. These differences include the disciplines needed, diversity and number of actors involved, and the technological infrastructures that facilitate localto-global connections. In this article, we discuss how the new requirements and possibilities for co-design, co-production, and practical use of social-ecological research can be used as an ecology for the city to promote urban sustainability and resilience. While new technologies are part of the solution, traditional approaches also remain important. Using our urban experiences with long-term, place-based research from several U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research sites and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Urban Field Stations, we describe a dynamic framework for linking research with decisions. We posit that this framework, coupled with a user-defined, theory-based approach to science, is instrumental to advance both practice and science. Ultimately, cities are ideal places for integrating basic science and decision making, facilitating flows of information through networks, and developing sustainable and resilient solutions and futures.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.