Vacant lot soil degradation and mowing frequency shape communities of belowground invertebrates and urban spontaneous ve
- PDF / 804,113 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 49 Downloads / 210 Views
Vacant lot soil degradation and mowing frequency shape communities of belowground invertebrates and urban spontaneous vegetation Kayla I. Perry 1
&
Nicole C. Hoekstra 1,2 & Steve W. Culman 2
&
Mary M. Gardiner 1
Accepted: 21 October 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Vacant land in legacy cities is increasingly recognized as a resource to support biodiversity and improve the quality of life for residents. However, the capacity for vacant lot parcels to provide these benefits is influenced by current management practices and landscape legacies of urbanization, which typically results in degraded soil quality. The role of soil quality in supporting urban biodiversity and ecosystem functions is often overlooked when developing sustainable urban planning initiatives. This study investigated how soil physical and chemical properties influenced the community of urban spontaneous vegetation and soil invertebrates found within vacant lots mowed monthly or annually in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We found that soil chemical and physical properties were strong predictors of soil-dwelling invertebrates, as vacant lots highly contaminated with heavy metals had simplified communities. Moreover, increased mowing frequency resulted in greater biomass and blooms of urban spontaneous forbs. Importantly, vacant lots dominated by urban spontaneous forbs and high bloom abundances also were contaminated with heavy metals, with implications for herbivores and pollinators using these resources. Our findings indicate that conservation initiatives must consider landscape legacies from industrial activity and local habitat management practices in order to support above and belowground habitat quality of greenspaces in urban ecosystems. Understanding how soil degradation impacts habitat quality and the delivery of ecosystem services from vacant land is essential for legacy cities to maximize their environmental benefits. Keywords Arthropod . City . Heavy metals . Insect . Lead . Legacy . Management . Urbanization
Introduction Legacy cities are metropolitan areas with less than 20% of their peak population and are larger than 50,000 residents (Mallach and Brachman 2013). Within the United States many factors have contributed to this depopulation, including economic disinvestment, suburbanization, aging populations, diminished property values, and abandonment (Mallach and Brachman 2013; Martinez-Fernandez et al. 2012; Nassauer
* Kayla I. Perry [email protected] 1
Department of Entomology, The Ohio State University, 2021 Coffey Road Columbus OH 43210 USA
2
School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, 1680 Madison Avenue Wooster OH 44691 USA
and Raskin 2014). This has created a vacancy landscape within legacy cities, consisting of a dynamic mosaic of occupied and abandoned structures and formally occupied vacant land (Herrmann et al. 2016; Odom Green et al. 2016). Vacant land is increasingly recognized as a valuable ecological resource, by provisioning ecosystem ser
Data Loading...
