Maintaining ecological integrity and sustaining ecosystem function in urban areas

Urbanizing regions increasing challenge the ecosystem's capacity to deliver important ecological services to the human population and support human well-being. Scholars of urban ecology have hypothesized that the patterns of urbanization control ecosystem dynamics through complex interactions and feedback mechanisms linking urban activities and their spatial organization to land cover and environmental change. However, empirical studies of the underlying processes and mechanisms linking urbanization patterns and ecosystem dynamics are still extremely limited. In this paper, I present a framework linking urban patterns to ecosystem functions and discuss a set of hypotheses based on the empirical evidence established in the literature.