BES at the 100th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, in Baltimore

The Ecological Society of America is the world's largest organization of professional ecologists.  Its members include not only research scientists at various career stages, from students, through postdoctoral associates, academic faculty, but it also includes those who work in government and the private sector.  Educators, journalists, and various sorts of artists are also among the members of the Society, from which they draw inspiration, information, and materials for their professional activities.

That the world's preeminent society for ecological research, application, and dissemination is meeting in Baltimore for its 100th anniversary is an excellent opportunity for BES.  Because BES is so invested in understanding the Baltimore social-ecological system and in working with communities, policy makers, and educators in the Baltimore metropolitan area, we can also connect the ESA with these broader constituencies in a remarkable way.

So I am encouraging all members of the BES community and those who share the interests of BES to participate in the meeting.  To further encourage participation, I note that BES members and those working doing research in the Baltimore region will be giving many presentations, conducting field trips, and providing workshops for the meeting.  Please peruse the list below and be stimulated to join in these efforts.  In addition to formal presentations and activities, there are many social events at which to network with familiar and new colleagues.

Check it out:

Title/Link	Author/ Organizers	Date/Time/Place	Type	Description
Spatial and temporal patterns of plant community assembly in urban vacant lots inform a collaborative restoration experiment	Anna L. Johnson, Christopher M. Swan	Thurs, Aug 13, 8:00 AM, 348 BCC	COS 113-1	While urban ecosystems can host surprisingly high levels of biodiversity, there are still many shifts in the characteristics of the biotic communities found in cities. In particular, urban species communities tend to become more functionally and phylogenetically homogeneous than non-urban communities.   ...
Spatial and temporal variability in greenhouse gas abundance of urban streams: The role of urban infrastructure	Rose M. Smith, Sujay S. Kaushal, Jake J. Beaulieu, Michael Pennino, Paul Mayer, Claire Welty, Andrew J. Miller	Thurs, Aug 13, 11:10 AM, 348 BCC	COS 113-10	... theoretical frameworks describing urban streams have focused on dissolved nutrient export, urban stream ecosystems are also dynamic in terms of GHG production in time and space. ... we hypothesized that nitrogen-loaded streams are likely to produce more N2O than streams with low N, and those draining stormwater management wetlands will produce relatively more CH4.
Environmental versus source pool constraints on an urban zooplankton metacommunity	Nicole Voelker, Chris Swan	Thurs, Aug 13, 2:30 PM, 301 BCC	COS 114-4	It is hypothesized that biodiversity is maintained by interactions at local and regional spatial scales. Many sustainability plans and management practices reflect the need to conserve biodiversity, yet once these plans are implemented, the ecological consequences are not well known.  ...
Continental-scale homogenization of US urban lawn vegetation	Megan M. Wheeler, Christopher Neill, Peter M. Groffman, Morgan Grove, Neil Bettez, Jeannine M. Cavender-Bares, James B. Heffernan, Sharon J. Hall, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Kristen C. Nelson, Laura A. Ogden, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, et al	Thurs, Aug 13, 4:00 PM 348 BCC	COS 132-8	... Residential lawns are generally highly managed and are very common in the urban landscape, and therefore are a good system in which to study the potential homogenizing effects of urban land use and management. We measured plant species in residential lawns in seven climatically distinct cities ... to assess how the vegetation structure and composition in residential lawns compared ...
Using long-term data to quantify seasonal and discharge variations in watershed nitrogen export across a land use gradient	Jonathan M. Duncan, Neil D. Bettez, Peter M. Groffman, Lawrence E. Band	Fri, Aug 14, 9:00 am, 302 BCC	COS 134-4	Land use and water infrastructure are important determinants of nitrogen (N) export to receiving waters.  Major policy and management efforts to address and reduce these exports have shifted over time and include: point source pollution reduction, stream restoration, stormwater control, and more recently the use of green infrastructure.
Urban evolution: The role of water	Sujay S. Kaushal, William H. McDowell, Wilfred Wollheim, Tamara Newcomer Johnson, Paul Mayer, Michael Pennino, Kenneth T. Belt	Wed, Aug 12, 2:50 PM, 348 BCC	COS 93-5	The structure, function, and services of urban ecosystems evolve over time scales ... as Earth’s population grows, infrastructure ages, and sociopolitical values alter them.  To systematically study changes over time, the concept of “urban evolution” was proposed. … The role of water is vital to urban evolution …
Urban Bioblitz Along Sites of Baltimore's Upper Middle Branch and Watershed 263.	Alan Berkowitz, Bess Caplan, Guy Hager, Christina Bradley	Sun, Aug 9, 9:45 AM - 2:00 PM, Charles St Entrance BCC	FT 10	... Baltimore has experienced population declines, social change and economic challenges ...  we will visit green infrastructure features in WS 263 focusing on how these  catalyze social cohesion and stimulate socio-economic revitalization. … discuss delivery of environmental education programs and have a picnic lunch.
Long Term Ecological Research Sites in Baltimore	Organizer: Peter Groffman, Co-organizer: Steward Pickett	Sun, Aug 9, 10:15 AM - 3:00 PM, Charles St Entrance BCC	FT 11	Visit the full range of long-term study sites in BES. The trip will include short hikes in our forest reference watershed and along our most urban stream reaches and a picnic lunch. 3:00 PM return to convention center …
A Hike Along the Gwynns Falls Trail	Organizer: Emma Rosi-Marshall Co-organizers: Morgan Grove, Laura Connelly and Guy Hager	Wed, Aug 12, 10:00 AM-2:00 PM Charles St. Entrance	FT 14	The Gwynns Falls Trail is a continuous recreation and open space corridor that connects over 30 neighborhoods and 2000 acres of publicly owned parkland. This hike will focus on the historic mill race section, examining engineering from 200 years ago, as well as more modern sewer and storm water systems and consider design alternatives.  This will be an easy two mile hike and include a picnic lunch.
Urban Bioblitz Along Sites of Baltimore's Upper Middle Branch and Watershed 263.	Alex Felson	Sun, Aug 9, 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM, Charles St Entrance BCC	FT 9	Join us on a trip along Baltimore's Upper Middle Branch trail and through the Pigtown and Carroll Park sections of Watershed 263.  …  Participants will work with community members, wildlife biologists to observe, collect, and identify some of the biodiversity along this watershed.  Teams will focus on plant diversity, birds, insects, and macro-aquatic invertebrates ...
Theoretical frameworks that bridge ecology and design	Brian McGrath, Victoria Marshall	Wed, Aug 12, 1:30 PM-3:00 PM, 345 BCC	IGN 10-2	Ecologists and designers need to share theoretical frameworks in order to develop actionable collaborative  research. Urban design is a complex, iterative, feedback process that involves multiple stakeholders and decision makers and a linear process where prescribed ecological principals inform design decision ...
Landscape and urban designed experiments	Alex Felson	Wed, Aug 12, 1:30 PM-3:00 PM, 345 BCC	IGN 10-6	Landscape designers increasingly draw on ecological knowledge to inform the sustainability and resilience aspects of their projects.  However, they are confronting gaps in the understanding of urban ecosystems and of what constitutes a sustainable and resilient urban landscape.  ...
Are cities the same everywhere? Testing homogeneity of human-dominated ecosystems at continental scales IGN2-7	Sharon J. Hall, Jennifer K. Learned, Benjamin L. Ruddell, Kelli L. Larson, Jeannine M. Cavender-Bares, Neil Bettez, , Peter M. Groffman, Morgan Grove, James B. Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Jennifer L. Morse, et al	Mon, Aug 10, 345 BCC	IGN 2-7	Have you noticed urban/suburban landscapes seem to look similar in cities—lawns and rows of single-family homes?  Or you've noticed how differently you manage your yard compared neighbors. We hypothesize these patterns are part of the American residential macrosystem, a homogenous social/ecological system distributed across diverse geographies.
Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere: New tools for Anthropocene ecologists	Erle Ellis	Tues, Aug 11, 10:30 AM, 310 BCC	OOS 13-8	Human transformation of the biosphere is an unprecedented challenge for ecological science. It is no longer possible to understand, predict, or successfully manage ecological pattern, process or change across most of the biosphere without understanding the processes by which human societies reshape these over the long-term. ...
Local and global patterns of urban soil biodiversity	Katalin Szlavecz	Mon, Aug 10, 2:30 PM, 310 BCC	OOS 1-4	Urban soils provide many of the same ecosystem services as “natural” or agricultural soils e.g. decomposition and nutrient cycling, water purification and regulation, medium for plant growth, and habitat for organisms. Soils in cities are disturbed, transported, heavily managed and even created. Urbanization is portrayed as one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss and ample evidence from large organisms supports this claim.  ...
Urban Soil Biodiversity: A New Frontier in Ecological Science and Education	Organizer: Katalin Szlavecz, Co-organizers: Richard V. Pouyat and Stephanie Yarwood, Moderator: Tara L. E. Trammell	Tues, Aug 11 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, 340 BCC	OOS 21	Biodiversity as an ecological concept is difficult for people to personally experience due in part to the fact that the majority of humans now live in urban areas. Moreover, the role of extremely diverse soil biota is often overlooked in assessing soil ecosystem services. Indeed, for much of the terrestrial ecosystems of the world, soil community structure and function reflect both natural and human disturbance and stress.  ...
The biogeography of urban soil microbes	Stephanie Yarwood	Tues, Aug 11 9:00 AM, 340 BCC	OOS 21-4	... few studies have comprehensively examined urban soils and fewer still have examined microbial diversity. As part of the Global Urban Ecology and Education Network (GLUSEEN), we sampled soils from five cities: Baltimore, USA; Helsinki and Lahti, Finland; Budapest, Hungary; Potchefstroom, South Africa.
Ecosystem functioning of urban soils: A global perspective	Richard V. Pouyat	Tues, Aug 11 9:50 AM, 340 BCC	OOS 21-6	Urban land-use change (LUC) can affect soil characteristics and associated biogeochemical cycles through altered disturbance regimes, management practices (e.g., irrigation), built structures, and modified environments (e.g., heat island).  As a result, the conversion of native to urban ecological systems should significantly affect the role soil plays in biogeochemical cycles at multiple scales.
Global comparisons of urban ecosystems: Two case studies	David Johannes Kotze, Richard V. Pouyat, Heikki Setala, Katalin Szlavecz	Tues, Aug 11 10:30 AM, 340 BCC	OOS 21-8	Knowledge on the effects of urbanization on ecosystems across regional, continental and global scales is scarce. To address this issue, ecological networks are useful tools to foster international collaboration among scientist towards common goals. Yet, these networks require intensive measurements and experiments, are cost prohibitive, thus hindering broad participation ...
Urbanization effects on nitrogen dynamics in the critical zone	Peter Groffman	Tues, Aug 11 1:50 PM, 328 BCC	OOS 30-2	Urbanization alters the structure and function of the critical zone by changing the way that water moves across the landscape and affecting connections between different components of the landscape. Addition of impervious surfaces to urban watersheds decreases groundwater recharge and increases the energy and amount of stormflow to streams.  These changes alter the coupling between uplands, riparian zones and streams ...
Socioecological linkages in cities and the rise in interdisciplinary research	Paige S. Warren, Ann Kinzig, Chris Boone	Wed, Aug 12, 10:10 AM, 340 BCC	OOS 45-7	A rich array of social science disciplines, including such fields as sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, environmental psychology, landscape architecture, and urban planning and design, have developed bodies of knowledge and theory about human life and the environment in cities with work stretching back over at least a century. Ecologists have come to the study of cities far later in the game ...
Baltimore's urban forest: Understanding the past and planning for the future	Buckley, Geoffrey	Wed, Aug 12, 2:10 PM, 317 BCC	OOS 50-3	In 1906, Maryland became just the third state to hire a professionally-trained forester. Over the course of a career that spanned 36 years Fred Besley introduced a variety of conservation programs that would be adopted both regionally and nationally. Baltimore’s aspiration to become known as the “city of a million trees” was never fully realized. Likewise, the city has struggled to produce an equitable distribution of trees.
Carbon flux and biological monitoring at the Baltimore Cub Hill flux tower: Partitioning the role of land use, carbon emissions and respiration	John Hom, Nicanor Saliendra, Matthew Patterson, Ian Yesilonis, Rodrigo Vargas, Kenneth L. Clark, Leonard Bielory	Fri, Aug 14, 11:10 AM, 310 BCC	OOS 82-10	Carbon flux measurements and carbon dioxide concentrations were taken along an urban to rural gradient from Cub Hill in Baltimore, Maryland (CH), Elk Neck, Maryland (EN) to the Silas Little Experimental Forest (SLEF) in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These sites incorporate heavily vegetated urban and rural forests.  ...
Bridging Ecology and Community-Based Planning Towards Earth Stewardship	Organizer: Alexander J. Felson, Co-organizer: Gillian Bowser, Moderator: Charles Nilon	Fri, Aug 14, 8:00 AM - 11:30, 315 BCC	OOS 84	How can ecology and community-based planning inform one another? Urban ecologists, as they engage with the human-built environment, are trying to integrate social components into their research methods and existing ecological theories, which were developed around fundamental biogeophysical drivers.
Seeking to understand in order to be understood: Markets, messages, and messengers for community-based adoption of sustainability practices	Morgan Grove, Dexter Locke	Fri, Aug 14, 9:20 AM, 315 BCC	OOS 84-5	We have tested the idea of an Ecology of Prestige. This theory posits that housing styles, yard characteristics, tree and shrub plantings, and green grass can be considered social-ecological symbols, reflecting the type of neighborhoods in which people live. These social-ecological symbols can be interpreted as the outward manifestation of each neighborhood’s placement in a social hierarchy of group identity and social status in the urban patch mosaic. ...
Learning communities of teachers and scientists to support educating students about urban ecosystems	Alan R. Berkowitz, Bess Caplan, Natalie Crabbs Mollett	Fri, Aug 14, 10:10 AM, 315 BCC	OOS 84-10	Understanding urban ecosystems is both an end goal for socio-ecological education in urban areas – so that students and teachers can use knowledge in their everyday lives and environments – and a key pedagogy for fostering environmental citizenship. ... The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) developed a ... community of scientists, educators and teachers to support place-based teaching in and about Baltimore’s socio-ecological system.
A common garden experiment: tree physiological performance across a suburban to urban gradient	Jessica L. Schedlbauer, Calvin Cooper, John Hom	Mon, Aug 10, Exhibit Hall, BCC	PS 19-183	As urbanization increases globally, the proportion of land area subject to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures in urban centers also rises.  Studies of plant physiology along suburban to urban gradients yield important insights into the effects of both urbanization and climate change on plant performance.
Does the urban matrix influence seed dispersal patterns in vacant lot plant communities?	Dorothy Borowy, Chris Swan	Wed, Aug 12, Exhibit Hall BCC	PS 58-186	Although a number of studies have explored both local effects and regional dispersal patterns in cities, results are inconclusive regarding the principle seed dispersal mechanisms in these environments.  This may be due to a number of factors …
UrBioNet: A global network for urban biodiversity research and practice	Myla F J Aronson, Charles H. Nilon, Christopher A. Lepzczyk, Tommy S. Parker, Paige S. Warren	Wed, Aug 12, Exhibit Hall BCC	PS 58-198	An understanding of the global factors affecting biodiversity in cities is necessary to inform scientists, city planners, and managers how best to conserve and restore urban biota.  Here we introduce UrBioNet, an NSF funded research coordination network focused on urban biodiversity and practice. UrBioNet will develop global databases, provide planning tools, and conduct research ...
Denitrification and soil water chemistry in riparian areas along an urbanization gradient	Neil D. Bettez, Jennifer L. Morse, Peter M. Groffman	Wed, Aug 12, Exhibit Hall BCC	PS 58-199	Humans have significantly altered the landscape in urban areas resulting in increased volume and velocity of runoff following precipitation events. This increased volume causes urban streams to become incised which disconnects them from their riparian areas, which are hot spots for denitrification.
Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice	Organizer: Ricardo Rozzi; Co-organizers: F. Stuart Chapin III, J. Baird Callicott, Steward T. A. Pickett, Mary E. Power, Juan J. Armesto, Roy H. May Jr.; Speakers: J. Baird Callicott, F. Stuart Chapin III, Roy H. May Jr., Manuel Maass, Laura A. Ogden and Eugene C. Hargrove	Tues, Aug 11, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM, 303 BCC	SS 18	Earth Stewardship signals a broader understanding of the expanded role of science in society. To engage science in reducing the rates of anthropogenic damage to the biosphere, the ESA launched the Earth Stewardship Initiative. ... The session explores stewardship across scales and disciplines, including the humanities as well as the sciences.
An Ecology IN, OF, and FOR the City SYMP 2	Organizer: Peter M. Groffman Co-organizers: Steward T.A. Pickett, Emma Rosi-Marshall, Morgan Grove, Daniel L. Childers and Mary L. Cadenasso  Moderator: Peter M. Groffman	Mon, Aug 10, 1:30 PM-5:00 PM, 308 BCC	Symp 2	The past decade has seen the maturation of the discipline of urban ecology. Whereas earlier urban ecological research focused on the obvious green components “IN” cities, a more comprehensive approach that investigates entire urban complexes as heterogeneous ecological systems - an ecology “OF” cities - has been added. …
The evolution and future of urban ecological science	Steward T. A. Pickett, Daniel L. Childers, Mary L. Cadenasso, Mark J. McDonnell, Weiqi Zhou	Mon, Aug 10, 1:30 PM. 308 BCC	SYMP 2-1	Since 1997, the contrast between ecology IN and ecology OF cities has been used to emphasize the increasingly interdisciplinary approach to urban ecosystems.  Ecology IN focuses on terrestrial and aquatic patches within cities, suburbs, …  Ecology OF the city, treats entire cities or landscape mosaics consisting of cities suburbs and exurbs as social-ecological systems.
Links between science, design and decision making in urban ecology: Best practice and its future refinement	Morgan Grove, Rinku Roy Choudhury, Daniel L. Childers, Laura A. Ogden, Alexander J. Felson, Erika Svendsen	Mon, Aug 10,  2:00 PM, 308 BCC	SYMP 2-2	To promote urban sustainability and resilience, the role of co-design, co-production, and dissemination of social-ecological knowledge is of growing interest & importance …
Beyond the urban stream syndrome: Understanding the ecology IN, OF, and FOR sustainable urban stream ecosystems	Emma J. Rosi-Marshall, Colden V. Baxter, Michelle Baker, Emily Bernhardt	Mon, Aug 10, 4:10 PM. 308 BCC	SYMP 2-6	A recent addition to paradigms in stream ecology is the “urban stream syndrome,” which suggests that hydrological changes associated with impervious surfaces in cities drive the loss of ecological integrity. We synthesize findings from urban streams encompassing a wide range of city sizes and biogeoclimatic contexts.  This synthesis provides new insights to further explore the ecology in, of, and for developing approaches for sustainable streams.
Life Under the City: Assessment of Urban Soils	Organizer: Katalin Szlavecz, Co-organizers: Chih-Han Chang , Ian D. Yesilonis and Jerry L. Burgess	Sat, Aug 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus	WK 2	This half day workshop provides an introduction to observe and sample urban soils and soil biota as well as measure their characteristics. Participants will be transported to the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus where they will conduct hands-on exercises in the laboratory and in the field. We will examine 1 m deep soil cores from a variety of urban, agricultural and forest land uses, conduct in situ texture analysis, sample soil fauna (earthworms and arthropods), and demonstrate decomposition experiments.  ...

For details access to the full meeting program, and information for registering for the full meeting or a single day, go to http://esa.org/baltimore/

Prof. Chris Swan, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is the Local Host for this meeting.  Chris has done an excellent job highlighting the activities and insights of Baltimore research in this meeting.

A Background Reading for the June 2015 Quarterly Project Meeting

Several of us have been working on an essay to describe more fully than an earlier post here, a theory of urban heterogeneity.  That essay is not complete yet, but it is mature enough to share with the BES community for purposed of this meeting.

It is entitled "Dynamic Heterogeneity as a Framework to Promote Ecological Integration and Hypothesis Generation in Urban Systems."  It is not ready for reposting or citation, so just use it for internal BES purposes now.

You can find it on Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ur7tynfh8aljtai/A%20Theory%20of%20Urban%20Heterogeneity%20Text%20V12.docx?dl=0

The Science of Connection in a Disconnected Place

The news from Baltimore has been sad and disturbing over the past few weeks.  Urban ecologists, like all ecologists, I think, love the places where they work.  So I must remark on what is happening in Baltimore and what it means to me, as a scientist who has committed more than two decades to research on the ecology of metropolitan Baltimore. 

But this post is not the usual kind of thing for this web log, which typically intends to note conceptual issues for the BES community, or provide alerts and background for important project activities, or stimulate interactions of BES with other projects conducting urban ecology research, education and community engagement.  This post is more like an editorial, in which I explore my own reactions as a scientist and as an African American to the troubling recent events in Baltimore.  Like the playwright Eugene Ionesco, I write here “to find out what I think.”  These opinions are my own and do not reflect those of other researchers, educators, or funders of BES.  Here goes.

The Science of Connection

Ecology can be thought of as a science of connections.  In fact connections, in the form of interactions, are enshrined in the early definition of the science: The study of interactions between organisms and their environment.  A more fleshed out version expands this, but keeps interaction and processes as key: The scientific study of the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy and matter. 

This fundamental interest is sometimes trivially reduced to the idea that everything is connected to everything else.  But what makes the ecological world work is not that everything is connected, but that things – organisms, processes, places – are differentially connected.  That is, some connections are strong, others are weak, and some don’t exist.  Some connections are brief, some persistent, and some change strength over time.   Some connections happen through close contact while others are transmitted by signals, materials, or cascades of effects over great distances. 

It is the job of ecological science to understand the nature and effect of such differential connectivity and exchanges in the systems it studies.  The connectivity principles of ecology might be better summarized like this: 1) everything is connected to something else; 2) connections change over space; 3) connections change over time including being created anew and disappearing; 4) connections are the glue in ecosystems, linking organisms, biological processes, and physical structures.  In urban ecosystems, social structures and processes, and infrastructures are included as nodes of connection.

Baltimore as a Differentially Connected Mosaic

Baltimore, including the chartered city and several nearby counties of equivalent jurisdictional level, is a hugely heterogeneous, patchy ecosystem.  The patchiness reflects the underlying geology and soils, the vegetation types, and the contrasts between wet and dry places.  It reflects where buildings and infrastructure have been installed, and where they have been replaced or abandoned.  It reflects the things that people plant for agriculture or for decoration, as well as plants that disperse, establish, and grow spontaneously.  It reflects how and where all these plants are managed – or not.  Patchiness reflects the habitats that people intentionally or accidentally make for animals, and the fact that people move animals around.  It reflects where people choose to settle and live, and where firms locate or leave from, and where people with different resources and social characteristics have access.  It reflects policy that govern zoning, transportation, financial investment, taxation, and public versus private expenditure. 

Many more sources of spatial differentiation could be mentioned.  But key is the idea that such patchiness sets up a field of differentials for connectedness in the Baltimore region and in its subsystems.  Like all American urban regions, Baltimore’s heterogeneity appears in the form of contrasting neighborhoods, social relations, wealth, and ecology.  BES has spent 18 years applying interdisciplinary methods to understand how this complex, differentially connected system works.

Disconnection in Baltimore

The sad fact and circumstances of the death of Mr. Freddie Gray point to some of the deep and persistent disconnections that exist in parts of Baltimore.  Certainly, the kinds of disconnection in evidence here are shared with many American urban systems – old and new, majority African American or not.  And certainly, not all neighborhoods in Baltimore are disconnected.

Sandtown,the neighborhood where Mr. Gray was born and in which he apparently suffered the wounds that led to his death a week later, is one in which we work.  It is a part of Watershed 263, a watershed defined by a stormwater drainage catchment.  Mr. Gray’s Sandtown is at the northern headwaters of this drainage catchment.  We use the drainage network – the watershed – as a tool to study connections between built infrastructure, household and institutional decision making, community activities aimed at environmental quality, and the amount and quality of the water draining different parts of the larger Watershed 263.  We use the same concept of watershed throughout the Baltimore region to understand how the rich diversity of patch types and their social, built, and biological conditions affect the water quality and flow across the entire Baltimore region.

Social Disconnection

While our watershed ecology research uses a conceptual tool emphasizing connection via water, it has become clear that Sandtown is a place of profound social disconnection.  There are many people within Sandtown and the 10 other neighborhoods of Watershed 263 that are deeply committed to improving people’s lives, through access to knowledge, gainful employment, healthy food, and a clean, stimulating, and comfortable green environment.  Seeing these dedicated people at work, and being able to support them through partnerships, including those with city agencies, public schools, private institutions, community groups, and NGO’s such as the Parks & People Foundation, has been one of the unalloyed pleasures of ecological research in Baltimore.

All these worthy activities and hard work can be seen as antidotes to the profound disconnectedness that many of these neighborhoods experience.  I draw my roster of disconnections from the writings of social researchers and journalists who have summarized these especially forcefully in recent days.  People in many old city neighborhoods, and in older suburbs, are disconnected from jobs.  Baltimore was a magnet for unskilled but willing workers in its industrial heyday.  Such jobs are largely gone.  Families are disconnected due to laws that stipulate incarceration for even some non-violent crimes.  Students are disconnected from effective learning by the social demands placed on public schools, and by the funding of public schools by the local property tax base.  Homeowners and would-be homeowners are disconnected from access to capital at reasonable rates by predatory lending and by the legacy of early 20th century mortgage restrictions.  Lack of capital or property-based profits affects ownership, repair and maintenance by occupants, and the willingness of absentee landlords to invest in their properties. 

Of particular relevance to the situation in which Mr. Gray found himself is a disconnection from the police.  Other events over the past few years may have left people with the idea that disconnections between the police and communities is a matter of race.  Clearly that is not the case in Baltimore, given the demographics of the city’s population and its police department.  However, there is disconnection nonetheless.  Ta-Nehesi Coates, Baltimore native, memoirist, and social critic, calls out the difference between policing based on authority versus that based purely on power.  Authority would arise from mutual respect and engagement (a rather Lincolnian – of, by, and for).  Power, in contrast, resides in distance and force.  This is not to deny that legitimate authority must sometimes draw upon force.  Others, better suited than I, should be consulted for the nature and significance of this kind of disconnection, which is coming to wider attention these days due to a well publicized litany of harm and mortality arising in the gap between power and authority.  But it is the disconnection currently most obvious on the nightly news beamed from Baltimore at convenient helicopter height.

The Deep Roots of Disconnection

As researchers of the long-term, the deep history of disconnection

An abandoned rowhouse
in Sandtown. The graffito
reads "Sadtown."

becomes apparent in such places as Sandtown.  The riots following Mr. Gray’s funeral are a contemporary echo of literally centuries of disconnection weighing on the population of Sandtown (or Watts, or the South Side, or Hough, or name-the-disconnected-areas in any number of other towns and cities).  Baltimore’s history of differential disconnection is storied, but not unique.  As a thumbnail sketch: 

First, of course, is the long fact and persistent shadow of slavery.  The period of slavery in the United States is much longer than the period of emancipation.  The commodification and capitalization of individual humans of African or mixed African and other descent, was simply the largest single source of wealth in the Antebellum United States.  The brief hope of Reconstruction after the Civil War gave way to a retaking of power (yes, power, as defined above), by those whose economic interests and social status had been damaged by the Civil War and its outcome.  The terrorism, legal exclusion, and absence of opportunity in the South in part fueled the Great Migration, the largest movement of people in the history of the United States.  Lasting, according to some scholars, from the 1880s through the 1960s, the Great Migration saw the exodus of African Americans from the South to cities to the north and west.  Washington DC, and Baltimore, although thought of as southern cities, were destinations in the Great Migration.  

The resulting changes in urban demography, employment patterns, and settlement patterns were major and sometimes long lasting events in the receiving cities.  For example, the creation of American sociology at the University of Chicago had as one of its foci the mechanisms and patterns of change occasioned by the migration of new residents from the American South and Eastern and Southern Europe.  The previous experience of cities and urbanists with such change had been with the relatively more homogeneous and familiar immigrations from Northern and Western Europe.  The unfamiliar arrivals, who were not schooled in urban living, seemed to discomfit the Chicago scholars, whose early writing embodied, to my reading a kind of racist reaction. 

In Baltimore at the beginning of the Great Migration, the city was, at the coarse scale, relatively integrated.  African Americans did experience fine scale segregation, being housed in meager alley houses, while their employers lived in more capacious and well appointed dwellings fronting larger streets.  The arrival of new migrants from the South caused a disruption of Baltimore’s racial patterns.  A series of policies and practices were put in place to purposefully segregate the growing African American population.  First, was the ordinance forbidding integration at the city block level.  Although the ordinance was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a few years after it was established, the replacement activities were harder to dismantle.  Among these was exclusionary zoning, in which industrial zoning was concentrated in areas from which the removal of African Americans or other recent immigrants was desired.  Also in the tool kit were deed covenants which forbade selling to African Americans or Jews.  Neighborhood Associations were established to help prevent “incursions” of African Americans.  And perhaps most notorious of these prejudicial tools was the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) rating of neighborhoods by credit worthiness.  Mortgages were not encouraged in areas receiving low ratings.  Low grades were bestowed, by definition, on the presence or risk of incursion by African Americans.  Age and size of housing stock were also included.  Even after World War II, with its segregation of the Armed Forces, the benefits of service were effectively preferentially available to white veterans.  The GI Bill, and access to mortgage tax credits are two such benefits, and these benefits opened the suburbs with their subsidized expressways, to those who qualified demographically.

The neighborhoods in Baltimore city clustered near downtown are some of the most conspicuous loci of the disconnections sketched above.  I think it is legitimate to call all of this the long shadow of slavery – the originally constitutional commodification of most African Americans, and the purposeful and continual disconnection of this group of persons from access to the organs of state, of policy, of capital, and of mobility. 

Seeing Connection

As desperate as the need for multifaceted connection in Sandtown and other neighborhoods continues to be, what does ecology have to contribute?  Little on the list of disconnection is under our control.  But, perhaps part of what ecology can do is honor the residents of all neighborhoods in Baltimore with knowledge and experience in the kinds of connection that we study and understand. This may seem like Gahndian idealism, and count for little in the face of accumulated anger and fear, sudden death and riot.  But perhaps the science of connection can help people to envision change, to see how they are linked to a larger and longer world, in which their future matters. 

Analysis of potential areas
available to plant trees (left panel),
a scenario for increasing tree
cover (right panel).

Part of that larger world is the unseen urban ecology, that is the underappreciated role of water, air, organisms, substrates – and differential connections – in the urban matrix.  Part of that larger world is social and historical.  We have shared findings that can help people move beyond myths that trees are associated with crime, and have documented how environmental inequities were created by the zoning process when Baltimore city was majority white, and have shown how amenities and hazards are currently differentially distributed in Baltimore’s underserved white and African American neighborhoods.  We have helped people understand the buried streams in their neighborhoods, and the relationship of what they plant to a milder local climate and the quality of water flowing toward their beloved bay – and crabs. 

Our contributions may help people whose horizons are painfully close, to see some connections to the larger world.  Maybe that’s a step in empowering people to claim more of the roster of connections that can overcome the long shadow of exclusion that falls so oppressively on people and places we love in Baltimore.

Some Background Sources

Boone, Christopher G. 2002. An assessment and explanation of environmental inequity in Baltimore. Urban Geography 23  581-595.

Boone, Christopher G., G. B. Buckley, J. M. Grove, and C. Sister. 2010. Parks and people: an environmental justice inquiry in Baltimore, Maryland. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Coates, Ta-Nehesi.  2015. “The Myth of Police Reform”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-myth-of-police-reform/390057/

Coates, Ta-Nehesi. 2009. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.  Spiegel & Grau.

Coates, Ta-Nehesi.  2014. “The Case for Reparations”

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Friedersdorf, Connor. 2015. “Two States of Emergency in Baltimore”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/what-policing-justice-in-baltimore-requires/391598/

Geldenhuys, Odette. 1995.  “Housing Segregation: Apartheid in Baltimore.” Baltimore Sun. Tribunedigital-Baltimoresun, March 17, 1995. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-03-17/news/1995076191_1_racial-segregation-zoning-ordinance-apartheid.

Graham, David.  2015. “The Paradox at the Heart of Police Brutality Protests”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-paradox-at-the-heart-of-police-brutality-protests/391637/

Light, Jennifer S. 2009. The nature of cities: ecological visions and the American urban professions 1920-1960. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Lord, Charles and K. Norquist. 2010. Cities as emergent systems: race as a rule in organized complexity. Environmental Law 40:551-596.

New York Times. 2015. “The Timeline of Freddie Gray’s Arrest and the Charges Filed”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/30/us/what-happened-freddie-gray-arrested-by-baltimore-police-department-map-timeline.html?_r=0

 Home to ‘Lot of Fries’

New York Times.  2015.  “Hard but Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/us/sandtown-winchester-baltimore-home-to-a-lot-of-freddie-grays.html

Olson, Karen. 1991. Old west Baltimore: segregation, African-American culture, and the struggle for equality. Pages 57-80 in E. Fee, editor. The Baltimore book: new views on local history. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

Olson, Sherry H. 1997. Baltimore: the building of an American city. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Reid, Ira De A. 1935.  The Negro Community of Baltimore: A Summary Report of a Socal Study conducted for the Baltimore Urban League, Baltimore.

Troy, Austin, J. M. Grove, and J. O'Neil-Dunne. 2012. The relationship between tree canopy and crime rates across an urban-rural gradient in the greater Baltimore region. Landscape and Urban Planning 106:262-270.

Wilkerson, Isabel.  2011.  The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.  Vintage Books, New York.

The Evolution of Urban Heterogeneity Thinking

The heterogeneity of cities has been acknowledged as one of their most striking features for a very long time.  Spatial heterogeneity characterized the ancient, cosmologically oriented cities of the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas (Lynch 1960; e.g. Fig. 1).  Social heterogeneity of cities, compared to rural village life, was recognized by the founders of modern sociology (Wirth 1945).  Urbanists, including urban designers, planners, community organizers, architects, among others, continue to be impressed with, engaged by, and responsive to the heterogeneity of cities and urban regions (Lefebvre 2003). 

Figure 1: The ancient Aztec city of

Tenochtitlan, a cosmological, 

political city.  Heterogeneity appears

as water, land, made land, ceremonial

and residential structures, and

agricultural areas. 

Although ecologists are admittedly relatively new comers to the city and the urban region as a subject of study, they come with a significant toolkit to deal with heterogeneity (Tischendorf and Fahrig 2000).  There is also a rich conceptual foundation for understanding heterogeneity within ecology (Wiens 1995, Pickett et al. 2001, Wu and David 2002).  In particular, a recent treatise on the theory of ecology illustrates the conceptual drawer of this toolkit (Scheiner and Willig 2011).  They summarize the most inclusive foundations of ecology in eight principles (Box 1).  Fully five of these principles mention heterogeneity by name or embed the core concept of heterogeneity within their scope.  These fundamentals are operationalized with such more specific disciplines within ecology as landscape ecology, metapopulation and metacommunitiy theories, succession, biogeography, evolutionary ecology, and ecosystem ecology.  

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Box 1.  Principles of General Ecological Theory, from Scheiner and Willig (2011: 13).  Quoting [With some explanations inserted in brackets, and the term heterogeneity or conceptual equivalents italicized]:

1. Organisms are distributed in space and time in a heterogeneous manner.

2. Organisms interact with their abiotic and biotic environments.

3. Variation in the characteristics of organisms results in heterogeneity of ecological patterns and processes.

4. The distribution of organisms and their interactions depend on contingencies. [Contingencies may be defined as heterogeneities in events, processes, resources, and stresses.]

5. Environmental conditions as perceived by organisms are heterogeneous in space and time.

6. Resources as perceived by organisms are finite and heterogeneous in space and time.

7. Birth rates and death rates are a consequence of interactions with the abiotic and biotic environment.

8. The ecological properties of species are the result of evolution. [N.B. Evolution by natural selection rests on the heritable heterogeneity or variation in organisms, and the degree to which it matches the prevailing, heterogeneous environment.]

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The practical tools of ecology also address heterogeneity, and do so increasingly.  Most conspicuous among these tools are those supporting landscape ecology.  In this genus of ecology, the concern is with the reciprocal relationship of pattern and process.  Consequently, ways to measure spatial differentiation are central to the discipline.  Gradients, patches, and patch mosaics are measured via field study, remote sensing, and statistical modeling.  Parameters such as patch size, patch shape, boundary thickness and porosity, nearest neighbor features, and so on, suggest and are applied to spatially-oriented questions.  Heterogeneity can be assessed in genetic, behavioral, and communication activities in populations, or in the distribution of competitive and facilitative interactions among species.  Changes in spatial heterogeneity over time is measured when concern is with such phenomena as succession, disturbance, migration, and ecosystem process rates, for example.  There is, simply, no facet of contemporary ecology that does not address and profit from understanding spatial and temporal heterogeneity (Tilman and Kareiva 1997, Lovett et al. 2005, Leibold 2011).

Fig. 2. Heterogeneity as cause and
consequence, or driver and outcome.

The urban realm – cities, suburbs, exurbs (CSE), and the urbanized regions they constitute – presents both the need and the opportunity to meld the heterogeneities recognized by the social sciences with that recognized by biophysical sciences (McGrath and Pickett 2011).  Thus sociology, economics, political ecology (a social science), diffusion of innovation, social network theory, and governance theory among others, and the various flavors of biophysical sciences, such as soil science, hydrology, biogeochemistry, plant and animal community ecology, biotic population ecology, microbial ecology, and others, must be in dialog.  And that dialog must address a variety of heterogeneities.  Not all heterogeneities must appear in all interdisciplinary models, but hypotheses about particular couplings will guide which heterogeneities are relevant over the long term.

The joint concern with heterogeneity by the social and the biophysical sciences in urban areas suggests a large hypothesis:  Spatial heterogeneity acts as a driver and an outcome that affect ecological processes in cities, suburbs, and exurbs (Figure 2).

Spiral Causality in Heterogeneity

This feedback model (Figure 2) may seem at first glance to be hopelessly circular.  But pull the circle apart, like a mental slinky, and a spiral form of hypothetical argumentation appears.  The spiral plays out over time.  The abstract spiral model of heterogeneity as driver-outcome-driver-outcome, etc., would need to be filled in by particular features and moved forward by particular ecological or social events.  This is how that might look (Figure 3):

Fig. 3. Converting apparently circular causality to spiral causality in which the action of different kinds of heterogeneity

can be understood and studied as linked outcomes and drivers.  The spiral begins with a set of boundary conditions or

initial heterogeneity.  Human or natural events convert that heterogeneity into a driver for further interaction.

Heterogeneity as Driver and Outcome: A Baltimore Scenario

A hypothetical example, likely to soon to be a testable reality in Baltimore and many other American cities located in the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome, is the interaction of the invading emerald ash borer with the distribution of planted and volunteer ash trees (Fraxinus spp.).  Ash trees are not uniformly distributed across CSE space.  Nor are the invading beetles.  This suggests the first link in a spiral of causation involving spatial heterogeneity (Figure 4).  It is based on the interaction between the initial heterogeneous distribution of ash trees, the presumably patchy invasion of the emerald ash borer, AND the patchy management by people of both the ash population and the insect.  These interventions and events result in a second kind of heterogeneity, the spatially distributed mortality (including preemptive removal) of ash trees. The initial condition is labeled an outcome, the events of invasion or management act on that outcome to produce a new spatial pattern – ash mortality, that then becomes a driver for further spatially explicit outcomes and the interventions or events they stimulate in nature or in society.  This same logic is played out in the remainder of the cascade involving patchy altered thermal environments, human risk of heat stress, and social and individual responses to heat stress in the altered environment (Figure 4). 

Fig. 4. A hypothetical model of the relationship of different kinds of heterogeneity that might exist and be causally linked following the invasion of the emerald ash borer in Baltimore or other cities.  The boxes attached to the event arrows can be
both biophysical and human generated.

Heterogeneity and the Urban Ecosystem

This is the kind of logic we wish to explore to generate specific testable hypotheses about 1) heterogeneity as both a driver and an outcome affecting ecological processes in the urban system of Baltimore, 2) the integration of human and natural processes in the urban ecosystem, and 3) the intersection of two of ecology’s fundamental concepts: heterogeneity and the ecosystem as it is manifested in urban areas.  BES IV will investigate the role of spatial heterogeneity as a driver and outcome as it underlies and affects the basic structures and interactions in the urban ecosystem (Figure 5).

Fig. 5. The human ecosystem, consisting of biotic, physical,

social, and built components, all interacting within the

context of spatial various kinds of heterogeneity that

affect the interactions among components, and therefore

the structure and function of the components.

References

Lefebvre, H. 2003. The urban revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Leibold, M. A. 2011. The metacommunity concept and its theoretical underpinnings. Pages 163-183 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lovett, G. M., C. G. Jones, M. G. Turner, and K. C. Weathers, editors. 2005. Ecosystem function in heterogeneous landscapes. Springer, New York.

Lynch, K. 1960. The image of the city. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

McGrath, B. and S. T. A. Pickett. 2011. The metacity: a conceptual framework for integrating ecology and urban design. Challenges 2011:55-72.

Pickett, S. T. A., M. L. Cadenasso, and C. G. Jones. 2001. Generation of heterogeneity by organisms: creation, maintenance, and transformation.in M. L. Hutchings, E. A. John, and A. J. A. Stewart, editors. Ecological consequences of habitat heterogeneity, the annual symposium of the British Ecological Society. Blackwell, London.

Scheiner, S. M. and M. R. Willig. 2011. A general theory of ecology. Pages 3-18 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Tilman, D. and P. Kareiva, editors. 1997. Spatial ecology: the role of space in population dynamics and interspecific interactions. Princeton University Press, Princeton 

Tischendorf, L. and L. Fahrig. 2000. On the usage and measurement of landscape heterogeneity. Oikos 90:7-19.

Wiens, J. A. 1995. Landscape mosaics and ecological theory. Pages 1-26 in L. Hansson, L. Fahrig, and G. Merriam, editors. Mosaic landscapes and ecological processes. Chapman and Hall, New York.

Wirth, L. 1945. Human ecology. American Journal of Sociology 50:483-488.

Wu, J. G. and J. L. David. 2002. A spatially explicit hierarchical approach to modeling complex ecological systems: theory and applications. Ecological Modelling 153:7-26.