Green infrastructure is a salient approach to address climate change adaptation in cities. However, some green infrastructure like community gardens are rarely incorporated in resilience and adaptation plans. In this paper, we argue that community gardens should be a prioritized element of green infrastructure to improve adaptation to climate change. Community gardens can reduce urban heat islands, provide various ecosystem services, and increase storm water retention. From a socioeconomic perspective, these gardens also build trust, facilitate participation, improve responses to natural disasters and food security -all vital components of effective adaptation and resilience to climate change. Yet, our qualitative analysis of 18 policy documents for Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City, U.S.A, found that green infrastructure to improve climate change adaptation prioritizes rain gardens, bioswales, and green roofs, but seldom acknowledge the role of community gardens. Furthermore, community gardens historically emerged in these cities to respond to stressors like economic, social, and political instability. Therefore, policies that address climate change should explicitly incorporate community gardens. Keywords: adaptive capacity; climate change adaptation; green infrastructure; urban greening. p. 242. The underutilized role of community gardens in improving cities' adaptation to climate change: A review

Small protected areas dominate some databases and are common features of landscapes, yet their accumulated contributions to biodiversity conservation are not well known. Small areas may contribute to global biodiversity conservation through matrix habitat improvement, connectivity, and preservation of localized ecosystems, but there is relatively little literature regarding this. We review one database showing that the average size of nearly 200,000 protected areas in the United States is ~2000 ha and the median is ~20 ha, and that small areas are by far the most frequent. Overall, 95% and 49% of the records are less than the mean (1648 ha) and median (16 ha), respectively. We show that small areas are prevalent features of landscapes, and review literature suggesting how they should be studied and managed at multiple scales. Applying systematic conservation planning in a spatially hierarchical manner has been suggested by others and could help insure that small, local projects contribute to global goals. However, there are data and financial limitations. While some local groups practice ecosystem management and conservation planning, they will likely continue to protect what is “near and dear” and meet site-based goals unless there is better coordination and sharing of resources by larger organizations.

Connectivity of social-ecological systems promotes resilience across urban landscapes. Community gardens are social-ecological systems that support food production, social interactions, and biodiversity conservation. We investigate how these hubs of ecosystem services facilitate socioecological connectivity and service flows as a network across complex urban landscapes. In three US cities (Baltimore, Chicago, New York City), we use community garden networks as a model system to demonstrate how biophysical and social features of urban landscapes control the pattern and magnitude of ecosystem service flows through these systems. We show that community gardens within a city are connected through biological and social mechanisms, and connectivity levels and spatial arrangement differ across cities. We found that biophysical connectivity was higher than social connectivity in one case study, while they were nearly equal in the other two. This higher social connectivity can be attributed to clustered distributions of gardens within neighborhoods (network modularity), which promotes neighborhood-scale connectivity hotspots, but produces landscape-scale connectivity coldspots. The particular patterns illustrate how urban form and social amenities largely shape ecosystem service flows among garden networks. Such socio-ecological analyses can be applied to enhance and stabilize landscape connectedness to improve life and resilience in cities. Urban landscapes are social-ecological systems that are growing in geographic area and population density across much of the world 1,2. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050 3 , with 89% projected for the USA alone. This forecast is prompting discussion on the sustainability of urban growth, and the maintenance of social well-being 4 and environmental integrity in urban landscapes 5. The interactions between social and biophysical features in cities regulate ecosystem functions 1,5-8 which provides essential ecosystem services to urban populations 9. Ecosystem services include supporting services (e.g. nutrient cycling), provisioning services (e.g. food), regulating services (e.g. climate regulation), and cultural services (e.g. recreation) 10. These services enhance the well-being of urban residents by improving physical and mental health 11 , and providing the basic materials for a good life that allow people freedom and choice of action 10. Yet the maintenance and management of ecosystem services across urban landscapes is challenging because of high spatial heterogeneity in land use composition and structure 12 , and the high social diversity in demographics and resource access among populations 13-15. Urban ecosystem services that support human well-being are thus derived from multiple and diverse biophysical, social, technological, and economic features that vary with spatial scale 16 across the landscape 17,18. Biophysical and social heterogeneity of landscapes determines the connectivity of ecosystem services through the facilitation o...

Urban community gardens offer unique social and ecological benefits in cities. However, given the dynamic nature of cities and the profound effects of variable land uses on green space provisioning for people and wildlife, investigating community gardens from a landscape perspective offers valuable insight into the functions of these spaces in terms of ecosystem services and sustainable development. In this study, we use garden locations provided by stakeholder groups and fine-scale spatial data to compare community gardens across three cities: New York City, NY, Chicago, IL, and Baltimore, MD (USA). In each city, we assess the spatial distribution of gardens and compare the natural vegetation and impervious surface cover within these gardens to the surrounding neighborhood and landscape. We then compared these cities to clarify the role of community gardens in metropolitan development. Our findings demonstrate that gardens cluster in neighborhoods in New York City and Chicago, but they are more spatially distributed across the landscape in Baltimore. The distribution of Baltimore's community gardens is more likely to be contributing to a greater network of ecosystem services across a broader urban landscape. Moreover, at the garden scale, gardens in NYC and Chicago have more canopy cover and built infrastructure than the more herbaceous gardens in Baltimore. This suggests that our case study cities exhibit different garden typologies, histories, and potential for ecosystem services. This work provides critical insight into the typology in and around community gardens in different cities, which is useful in understanding the potential ecosystem services and planning trajectories of these cities. Keywords Distribution. Ecosystem services. Green infrastructure. Land use. Urban agriculture. Urban greening

Context With underrepresentation of habitats in publicly protected areas, attention has focused on the function of alternative land conservation mechanisms. Private conservation easements (CEs) have proliferated in the United States, yet assessing landscape-level function is confounded by varying extent, resolution, and temporal scale. Objectives We developed and tested an assessment tool to evaluate interacting spatial, social, and environmental attributes of easements relative to the degree of human modification (HM). We hypothesized that on both private and public conservation properties HM would be lower than on non-conserved parcels, and that for fine-scale features (most CEs), the level of HM would be driven by the variables used to create the coarser scale HM measure. Methods Variation in HM between private, public, and non-conserved was tested via pairwise parcel sampling. Composition was evaluated using multiple geographic bounds and edge characteristics. We assessed both environmental and social predictors using multinomial logistic regression. Results Privately conserved lands did not differ significantly from non-conserved lands. Publicly conserved lands had lower HM than both privately conserved and non-conserved lands. Edge contrast was similar between private and matched non-conserved patches. The level of HM was not driven by distance to roads, or by elevation in this mixed-use setting.