Large-scale determinants of street tree growth rates across an urban environment.

Urban street trees offer cities critical environmental and social benefits. In New York City (NYC), a decadal census of every street tree is conducted to help understand and manage the urban forest. However, it has previously been impossible to analyze growth of an individual tree because of uncertainty in tree location.

NPCC4: Concepts and tools for envisioning New York City's futures.

This chapter of the New York City Panel on Climate Change 4 (NPCC4) report discusses the many intersecting social, ecological, and technological-infrastructure dimensions of New York City (NYC) and their interactions that are critical to address in order to transition to and secure a climate-adapted future for all New Yorkers. The authors provide an assessment of current approaches to "future visioning and scenarios" across community and city-level initiatives and examine diverse dimensions of the NYC urban system to reduce risk and vulnerability and enable a future-adapted NYC. Methods for the integration of community and stakeholder ideas about what would make NYC thrive with scientific and technical information on the possibilities presented by different policies and actions are discussed.

Urbanization exacerbates climate sensitivity of eastern United States broadleaf trees.

Tree growth is a key mechanism driving carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems. Environmental conditions are important regulators of tree growth that can vary considerably between nearby urban and rural forests. For example, trees growing in cities often experience hotter and drier conditions than their rural counterparts while also being exposed to higher levels of light, pollution, and nutrient inputs.

Change of urban park usage as a response to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Urban parks became critical for maintaining the well-being of urban residents during the COVID-19 global pandemic. To examine the impact of COVID-19 on urban park usage, we selected New York City (NYC) and used SafeGraph mobility data, which was collected from a large sample of mobile phone users, to assess the change in park visits and travel distance to a park based on 1) park type, 2) the income level of the visitor census block group (visitor CBG) and 3) that of the park census block group (park CBG). All analyses were adjusted for the impact of temperature on park visitation, and we focused primarily on visits made by NYC residents.

Bridging landscape ecology and urban science to respond to the rising threat of mosquito-borne diseases.

The prevalence of diseases borne by mosquitoes, particularly in the genus Aedes, is rising worldwide. This has been attributed, in part, to the dramatic rates of contemporary urbanization. While Aedes-borne disease risk varies within and between cities, few investigations use urban science-based approaches to examine how city structure and function contribute to vector or pathogen introduction and maintenance.

Water and nitrogen shape winter annual plant diversity and community composition in near-urban Sonoran Desert preserves.

Increased nitrogen (N) deposition threatens global biodiversity, but its effects in arid urban ecosystems are not well studied. In addition to altered N availability, urban environments also experience increases in other pollutants, decreased population connectivity, and altered biotic interactions, which can further impact biodiversity. In deserts, annual plant communities make up most of the plant diversity, support wildlife, and contribute to nutrient cycling and ecosystem processes.

Nitrogen cycling and urban afforestation success in New York City.

Afforestation projects are a growing focus of urban restoration efforts to rehabilitate degraded landscapes and develop new forests. Urban forests provide myriad valuable ecosystem services essential for urban sustainability and resilience. These essential services are supported by natural soil microbial processes that transform organic matter to critical nutrients for plant community establishment and development.

Mixed method approach to assess atmospheric nitrogen deposition in arid and semi-arid ecosystems.

Arid and semi-arid ecosystems (aridlands) cover a third of Earth's terrestrial surface and contain organisms that are sensitive to low level atmospheric pollutants. Atmospheric nitrogen (N) inputs to aridlands are likely to cause changes in plant community composition, fire frequency, and carbon cycling and storage. However, few studies have documented long-term rates of atmospheric N inputs in aridlands because dry deposition is technically difficult to quantify, and extensive sampling is needed to capture fluxes with spatially and temporally heterogeneous rainfall patterns.

Phosphorus in Phoenix: a budget and spatial representation of phosphorus in an urban ecosystem.

As urban environments dominate the landscape, we need to examine how limiting nutrients such as phosphorus (P) cycle in these novel ecosystems. Sustainable management of P resources is necessary to ensure global food security and to minimize freshwater pollution. We used a spatially explicit budget to quantify the pools and fluxes of P in the Greater Phoenix Area in Arizona, USA, using the boundaries of the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research site.