Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change. Группа авторов

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Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change - Группа авторов


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live in, walk on and ride on, such as buildings, parking lots, roads, sidewalks, green spaces, and public transportation (Andersson et al. 2014). Belowground component encompasses massive foundations of the buildings, subway lines, tunnels, gas lines, water and sewage pipes, stormwater management, electricity, and optical cables for providing various services to the citizens and ease in their livelihood (Sun and Cui 2018; Ma et al. 2020). Both the components of the urban infrastructures hold crucial significance and interact with each other in complex ways (Pandit et al. 2015). Aboveground infrastructures provide living spaces and comforts to the citizens, whereas belowground components play equally important services in the form of utilities, transportation, biomass, and structures which enable the urban areas for smooth functioning of the aboveground components (Ferrer et al. 2018; Ma et al. 2020). Moreover, natural components of the urban infrastructures such as plant roots and microbial communities also show strong competition for the space in the belowground components (Mullaney et al. 2015).

      Land‐use and land‐cover changes are one of the major drivers of global change processes which should be taken into account considerably from ecological point of view (Vitousek 1994). Urban land cover has been projected to increase by 200% within the first three decades (2000–2030) of the twenty‐first century (Elmqvist et al. 2013). These projections revealed that there has been and would be a massive investment in the development of the urban infrastructures at the cost of consumption of natural ecosystems/landscapes (Green et al. 2016). Increase in impervious surfaces and the materials used for their formation (dark asphalt and roofing materials) due to massive urbanisation have the ability to absorb the solar irradiance and influence the local climate and hydrological conditions (Vasishth 2015). UHI effect (described later) is one of the major outcomes of the increase in such urban built infrastructures (Jaganmohan et al. 2016). For managing the urban ecological components (e.g. biodiversity, nutrient cycling, etc.) influenced by the land‐use change patterns, several conceptual frameworks, and models have been developed (Pickett et al. 2011). However, their proper implementation is lacking due to poor representation of the social components in these frameworks (Zipperer et al. 2011). Nowadays landscape urbanism is the emerging concept with non‐hierarchical, flexible and strategic planning where landscapes in the urban areas are designed and managed as per the demand of the society (Kattel et al. 2013). Detailed elaboration of such strategies and frameworks has been given in the later sections of the chapter.

      1.2.1.1 Urban Heat Islands

      1.2.2 Urban Vegetation

      Vegetation, particularly trees, plays a crucial role in maintaining the harmony in the urban ecosystems (Tigges et al. 2013). For example, trees store sufficient amount of carbon (C) and help in maintaining the overall C‐pool of the urban ecosystems (Davies et al. 2011). Urban ecosystems have sufficient potential to store C in their above‐ and belowground components (Hutyra et al. 2011; Nowak et al. 2013), even in dense urban areas (Mitchell et al. 2018). Urban areas have abundant shade trees (recreational purpose), trees grown for hazard removal, or exotic trees, all have potential to store substantial amount of C in their vertical structures. However, C‐density of the urban areas varies at spatio‐temporal scales (Mitchell et al. 2018; Upadhyay et al. 2021). Detailed view on the urban C‐stocks and their ecosystem services have been highlighted in the latter part of the chapter.

      1.2.3 Urban Metabolism

      The urban areas can be considered as an organism where consumption of materials, flow of energy and information, and waste generation (as end‐products) are the common processes occurring at various spatio‐temporal scales (Liu et al. 2013; Vasishth 2015; Verma et al. 2020a). These processes not only occur within a city but also affect the environment beyond the borders of the city, as like the natural organisms where different cells and tissues interact and involve in the metabolic processes and excrete the wastes outside the cell/body (Liu et al. 2013; Verma et al. 2020a). To understand the concept of material and energy supply for the functioning of the cities and the resultant waste (pollutants) generation in the urban ecosystems, the concept of urban metabolism has emerged (Restrepo and Morales‐Pinzon 2018). The concept was first proposed by Wolman (1965), who believed


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