A Gardener's Influence on Urban Soil Quality

Tresch, Simon; Moretti, Marco; Bayon, Renée‐Claire Le; Mäder, Paul; Zanetta, Andrea; Frey, David; Fließbach, Andreas

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2018.00025

Cited by 52 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 101 publications

(103 reference statements)

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“…We consider five UGS types widely distributed in cities worldwide: Gardens, Allotment, Parks, Brownfields, and Green roofs (Figure c; Figure S2; Aronson et al, ). Gardens predominantly consist of lawn, flower borders and woody vegetation (Tresch et al, ) and are adjacent to a single‐occupancy house. Allotments encompass gardens on public land, managed by associations and leased to gardeners in lots of 100–200 m 2 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The origin of urban communities: From the regional species pool to community assemblages in city

Fournier

Frey

Moretti

2020

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Cities worldwide are characterized by unique human stressors that filter species based on their traits, potentially leading to biodiversity loss. The knowledge of which species are filtered and at which scale is important to gain a more mechanistic understanding of urban community assembly and to develop strategies to manage human impact on urban ecosystems. We investigate the ecological mechanisms shaping urban community assembly, taking into account changes across scales, taxa and urban green space types. Location City of Zurich, Switzerland. Taxon Carabid beetles and wild bees. Methods We use a large species occurrence and trait dataset with a high spatial resolution to assess the filtering effect of a medium‐sized city on a regional pool of potential colonists. We then assess the filtering from the urban pool to five widely distributed types of urban green spaces. Results We found that our model city selects for functionally similar but taxonomically diverse bee and carabid beetle species from the regional species pool. Within the city, community assembly processes vary among green space types and taxa resulting in important changes in community taxonomic and functional composition. Main conclusions Our findings suggest that urban community assembly is a multi‐scale process dominated by the strong environmental filtering from a regional to an urban species pool. This leads to the selection of species pre‐adapted to urban conditions. Spatial habitat heterogeneity within and among UGS types can maintain an important taxonomic diversity within cities. However, increasing urban functional diversity would require stronger management efforts that consider regional ecological processes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Allotments encompass gardens on public land, managed by associations and leased to gardeners in lots of 100–200 m 2 . Allotments are dominated by annual vegetation such as vegetables and characterized by high amounts of bare soil (Tresch et al, ). They also include many white flowering shrubs and fruit trees.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin of urban communities: From the regional species pool to community assemblages in city

Fournier

Frey

Moretti

2020

Journal of Biogeography

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“…Litter residue quality after decomposition was assessed by the composition of functional organic compounds measured by diffuse reflectance Fourier transform mid-infrared spectroscopy (mid-DRIFTS) following Rasche et al (2013). For measurement details see Tresch et al (2018a). We applied midDRIFTS before and after decomposition revealing the biochemical quality of the organic residues (see Table 1).…”

Section: Litter Decomposition Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The complex urban soils are the foundation of a range of functions and services such as supporting (soil formation, nutrient cycling or habitat space), regulating (climate, floods and water), carrying or cultural services (Rawlins et al, 2015;Tresch et al, 2018a), which are essential for liveable and resilient cities (Elmqvist et al, 2015). Urban soils are influenced by several factors such as compaction, urban warming -the elevation in urban relative to non-urban temperatures (Oke, 1995) -increased precipitation (Gilbert, 1989), modified hydrology (Francis, 2014) and increased deposition of pollutants and nitrogen (Kaye et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, in the case of urban garden soils, specific garden management practices can increase soil quality indices, such as organic matter content and biological activity, over the long term (Edmondson et al, 2014;Tresch et al, 2018a), if organic cultivation rules without chemical fertilisation and pesticides have been implemented (Bretzel et al, 2018). Thus, it seems probable that some urban soils contains higher organic carbon contents than those in rural landscapes (Edmondson et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Litter decomposition driven by soil fauna, plant diversity and soil management in urban gardens

Tresch

Frey

Bayon

et al. 2019

Science of The Total Environment

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105

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which should be cited to refer to this work. richness decreased, with the exception of gastropods, and soil fauna abundance increased with urban warming. Our data also show that plant species richness positively affected litter decomposition by increasing soil fauna species richness and microbial activity. A multivariate analysis of organic compounds in litter residues confirmed the importance of soil fauna species richness and garden management on litter decomposition processes. Overall, we showed, that also in intensively managed urban green spaces, such as gardens, biodiversity of plants and soil fauna drives key ecosystem processes. Urban planning strategies that integrate soil protecting management practices may help to maintain important ecosystem services in this heavily used urban environment.

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Composition and chemical properties of the soils of the city of Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain

Paradelo¹,

Herbón²,

Barral³

2020

J of Env Quality

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Urban soils are still insufficiently studied despite the relevance of their functions in the urban environment. The city of Santiago de Compostela (northwestern Spain) offers interesting opportunities for the study of urban soils because of its geological diversity and the variety of land use and vegetation. With the objective of increasing information about urban soils in Spain, we studied samples from 56 urban soils (0–20 cm) in this city, developed over different parent materials (granites, gneiss, schists, and amphibolites) and under several land uses (lawn areas, forested areas, urban allotment gardens, peri‐urban agricultural soils, and a green roof). The main physicochemical properties of the soils were analyzed, including bulk density, texture, pH, organic matter, cation exchange capacity, available P, and compounds of Fe and Al. The soils are coarse textured (dominant texture is sandy loam) and acidic (pH in water from 4.7 to 6.9), with moderate to high organic matter contents (13–137 g organic C kg−1). Cation exchange capacity ranges from 9 to 48 cmolc kg−1, with Ca as the most abundant exchangeable cation in most soils. Overall, the soils do not show several of the common features of other urban soils, such as alkalinity, high bulk density, or large amounts of artifacts, and their composition is very similar to their natural counterparts in the region. The conservation of these soils with a low degree of artificialization is essential because they can provide a wide range of ecosystem services.

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A Gardener's Influence on Urban Soil Quality

Cited by 52 publications

References 101 publications

The origin of urban communities: From the regional species pool to community assemblages in city

The origin of urban communities: From the regional species pool to community assemblages in city

Litter decomposition driven by soil fauna, plant diversity and soil management in urban gardens

Composition and chemical properties of the soils of the city of Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain

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