{"id":4338,"date":"2018-03-23T11:22:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T16:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/for-wisconsin\/?post_type=campus_story&p=4338"},"modified":"2018-03-23T11:22:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T16:22:57","slug":"uw-madison-graduate-student-studies-how-green-spaces-in-cities-help-control-floods-store-carbon","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-madison-graduate-student-studies-how-green-spaces-in-cities-help-control-floods-store-carbon\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Madison graduate student studies how green spaces in cities help control floods, store carbon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Carly Ziter conducts field work in a restored urban prairie in Turville Point Conservation Park in Madison. Photo by Eric Pedersen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For many ecologists, fieldwork involves majestic mountains or rushing rivers or large tracts of wilderness. At the very least, it means exploring natural areas that aren\u2019t defined by human development.<\/p>\n

But for Carly Ziter, a research site can be a lot closer to home. In fact, it can be right out your back door.<\/p>\n

In a study published March 6 in the journal\u00a0Ecosystem Applications<\/a>, Ziter, a graduate student in integrative biology professor Monica Turner\u2019s lab at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, finds that urban green spaces like backyards, city parks and golf courses contribute substantially to the ecological fabric of our cities \u2014 and the wider landscape \u2014 and they need to be added to the data ecologists currently use when exploring big questions about our natural world.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Carly Ziter collects soil samples from the front yard of a study participant in Madison\u00a0to determine the benefits provided by different types of urban green space.\u00a0Photo by Lauren Jensen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOften when we\u2019re doing regional studies of ecosystem services, or the ways that nature benefits us, we ignore the cities,\u201d Ziter says. \u201cWe treat the city as this kind of gray box; quite literally on maps it\u2019s often a gray box. And what we\u2019ve discovered here is that \u2026 we need to be thinking about the city as part of the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

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To get a sense of how urban areas fit into bigger landscape dynamics, Ziter took soil samples from 100 sites around the city of Madison, Wisconsin. She surveyed cemeteries, the UW Arboretum, public parks \u2014 and lots and lots of backyards.\u00a0 Each sample was then analyzed for three ecosystem services: carbon storage, water quality regulation and flood mitigation. The results indicate that urban green spaces play a significant role in providing some ecosystem services.<\/p>\n

For example, Ziter found that more developed areas like public parks and people\u2019s yards store substantially more carbon in their soils than urban forests or grasslands. Urban soils even stored more carbon on average than the agricultural soils that dominate Madison\u2019s surrounding landscape.<\/p>\n

Despite this large carbon sink, many regional or even national assessments of carbon storage \u201ccount urban areas as zero,\u201d Ziter says.<\/p>\n

Everywhere she looked in her research sites, Ziter found examples of ecosystem services. Urban forests and grasslands had a big impact on flood control, allowing water to infiltrate into the soil instead of simply running off into streets or storm sewers. And the kind and magnitude of service being provided varied from site to site.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy front yard and my backyard can be more different in terms of their ecology than two houses across the city from one another,\u201d Ziter says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s really fascinating from a management perspective, because it\u2019s these small decisions people are making as individuals that are shaping the ecology of these landscapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a 2016 report by the United States Census Bureau, more than 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas, which means that individual decisions can add up to big impacts on carbon storage, flood control or water quality \u2014 whether it\u2019s planting turf grass or setting up a garden bed or putting in a driveway.<\/p>\n

But these aren\u2019t the only ecosystem services provided by the \u201curban wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re out gardening, you\u2019re interacting with the natural world. If you\u2019re going out for a walk along the lake, you\u2019re interacting with the natural world. We often think of nature as being in these big wild spaces, but there are a lot of smaller day-to-day interactions that we don\u2019t realize are fostering a connection to our environment,\u201d Ziter says. And these interactions promote physical health, mental well-being and overall quality of life in a city, she adds.<\/p>\n

Ziter hopes her study can help highlight the importance of urban green spaces and encourage more ecologists to start studying these urban environments. However, she cautions, the job may not be for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to get permission for every single one of my hundred sites within the city,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that meant speaking one-on-one with upwards of 100 people, and that\u2019s everyone from Joe Next Door to the golf course superintendent to a church group that manages a prairie restoration.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she didn\u2019t mind fielding questions from curious homeowners or passerby, Ziter says, she realizes that \u201cthat type of social interaction is not in the tool kit of many ecologists!\u201d<\/p>\n

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Long-term Ecological Research (grant DEB-1440297) and Water, Sustainability and Climate (grant DEB-1038759) programs, the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Vilas Trust, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship, and a PEO Scholar Award.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Adam Hinterthuer,\u00a0Hinterthuer@wisc.edu<\/a>, 608-630-5737<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many ecologists, fieldwork involves majestic mountains or rushing rivers or large tracts of wilderness. At the very least, it means exploring natural areas that aren\u2019t defined by human development. But for Carly Ziter, a research site can be a lot closer to home. In fact, it can be right out your back door. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-4338","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/4338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=4338"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=4338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}