Down by the Riverside: Urban Riparian Ecology

Riparian areas are hotspots of interactions between plants, soil, water, microbes, and people. While urban land use change has been shown to have dramatic effects on watershed hydrology, there has been surprisingly little analysis of its effects on riparian areas. Here we examine the ecology of urba...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in ecology and the environment 2003-08, Vol.1 (6), p.315-321
Main Authors: Groffman, Peter M., Bain, Daniel J., Band, Lawrence E., Belt, Kenneth T., Brush, Grace S., Grove, J. Morgan, Pouyat, Richard V., Yesilonis, Ian C., Zipperer, Wayne C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Forest soils
Reviews
Riparian areas
Riparian ecology
Riparian soils
Soil ecology
Streams
Urban ecology
Urban soils
Watershed hydrology
Watersheds
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Summary:Riparian areas are hotspots of interactions between plants, soil, water, microbes, and people. While urban land use change has been shown to have dramatic effects on watershed hydrology, there has been surprisingly little analysis of its effects on riparian areas. Here we examine the ecology of urban riparian zones, focusing on work done in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a component of the US National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research network. Research in the Baltimore study has addressed how changes in hydrology associated with urbanization create riparian "hydrologic drought" by lowering water tables, which in turn alters soil, vegetation, and microbial processes. We analyze the nature of past and current human interactions with riparian ecosystems, and review other urban ecosystem studies to show how our observations mirror those in other cities.
ISSN:1540-9295
1540-9309
DOI:10.1890/1540-9295(2003)001[0315:DBTRUR]2.0.CO;2