CREAF

TITLE: Ecological components of urbanization in the context of a changing climate

DATE: 17th February 2023.

TIME & FORMAT: form 12 to 1pm CET - In-person and online.

Seminars will combine in-person and online formats (CREAF, Sala Graus II, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) but in all cases, talks will be always streamed (not recorded), so they can be followed online.

HOW TO CONNECT: direct link to Darrel Jenerette's conference.

SUMMARY OF THE WORKSHOP:

Urbanization is a major driver of global ecological changes. At the same time, ecological dynamics have a great impact on urban residents, which includes more than half of the global population. To explore the reciprocal interactions between urbanization and ecological processes I use the Los Angeles megacity region as a case study. Los Angeles is in a Mediterranean type climate, includes a dramatic coastal to desert gradient, and is home to 18 million residents. Urbanization within Los Angeles has led to a highly diverse tree community that is distributed in response to current and historical demographic patterns. The physiological traits of these trees exhibit unexpectedly large plasticity and relationships that differ from trees in their native habitats. The effect of the trees and other vegetation on local residents is most prominent through cooling, which increases during hotter periods. However, the requirements of water to sustain tree communities is extensive. The effects of urbanization further propagate out from the city through influences at the wildland urban interface. Similarly, dynamics within the wildland urban interface have a direct effect to urban residents through fires, ecosystem services, and threatened species. These findings help inform a comprehensive framework for evaluating how urban-ecological systems are components of global changes and provide opportunities for creating more sustainable futures.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Landscape and ecosystem ecologist. He works as a Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and as the Director for the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of California Riverside. Previously he was a Biological Informatics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona, and a Graduate Fellow at Arizona State University. His work has been directed to drylands across multiple land uses. In conducting his research he uses field observations, experiments, remote sensing, and modeling. In addition to urban related research, he has also conducted much research into dryland soils and ecosystems with a focus on developing new theories of pulse driven responses to rainfall variability. Currently, he is on a one year sabbatical based at the University of Alicante and is looking to interact with new colleagues throughout Spain.