About Urbanization and Fragmentation: Interactions and Ecological Consequences

This collection is now closed to submissions.

Habitat loss and fragmentation have long been regarded as the primary threat to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity.  Urbanization is the most extreme form of land use and land cover change that causes habitat loss and fragmentation. As more than 2 billion people are projected to join the global urban population by 2050, urbanization will undoubtedly continue. Thus, understanding how urbanization drives habitat loss and fragmentation and in turn how it affects biodiversity and ecosystems is urgent and important to both biodiversity conservation and urban sustainability.  Unfortunately, such understanding is lacking because the two topics have seldom been investigated together with explicit linkages. In addition, while the negative impacts of habitat loss are well documented with broad agreement, how habitat fragmentation per se – the breaking up of habitat into a greater number of smaller patches – affects biodiversity and ecological processes has been intensely debated during the past two decades.  Yet, few studies have examined the fragmentation debate in the urban context which is increasingly relevant.

The main goal of this collection is, therefore, to advance our understanding of how urbanization and habitat fragmentation interact and together impact biodiversity and ecosystems. The collection will focus on the following research questions:
 

1. How does urbanization quantitatively affect habitat fragmentation at different spatial scales (e.g., local, regional, and global scales)?
2. How do biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and ecosystem services respond to habitat fragmentation per se in urban landscapes?
3. How do habitat loss and fragmentation interactively affect biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and ecosystem services in urban landscapes?
4. How does the urban matrix affect the effects of fragmentation on biodiversity and ecosystem processes?
5. Are there habitat thresholds in terms of the amount and spatial arrangement below which urban biodiversity and/or ecosystem sustainability would collapse?

This collection welcomes original research papers as well as review and perspective papers. 

Keywords: Urbanization, Biodiversity, Habitat Loss and Fragmentation, Natural Remnants, Ecosystem Processes, Ecosystem Services, Urban Landscapes, Urban Matrix.

Submission deadline: 31st December 2023

This collection is part of the Ecology and Global Change Gateway, dedicated to providing researchers, policymakers and practitioners with a space to openly discuss and share work related to all areas of ecology and global environmental change.

Any questions about this collection? Please contact: research@f1000.com