What’s the Story of Soil in My City?

This blog post was written by Elizabeth Wilkes as part of the Spring 2018 UGA Urban Ecology class. Why Urban Soil Matters Soil is the basis for human life, supporting the life of plants which form the foundation of ecosystems. This fact can be easy to forget in the context of a city dominated by concrete and asphalt. Beneath roads, buildings, parking lots, and other impermeable surfaces in urban areas, dirt still exists, but most…

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How Can Green Infrastructure Help Mitigate the Effects of Urban Climate Change?

This blog post was written by Maddie Monroe as part of the Spring 2018 UGA Urban Ecology class. As humans increase in numbers and continue to use resources, natural geographic systems and the organisms that rely on them will be increasingly affected by anthropogenic effects (Douglas and James, 2015). Urban Heat Islands are one consequence of how human modification of the environment has affected climate within cities.  The heat islands are the warmer urban temperatures…

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