Wed, Aug 04, 2021:On Demand
Background/Question/Methods
As the world urbanizes, resulting shifts in land use throughout urban gradients drive concerns about “ecological homogenization” at broad scales. Households make important environmental decisions while managing residential yard landscaping, with implications for flora and fauna, as well as ecosystem services such as pollination. Yard management is shaped by household characteristics as well as broader-scale governance at the neighborhood and municipal scales. We present here the results of collaborative research linking household social data, parcel-scale land cover, and plant species composition in yards across six U.S. cities. We evaluate how residents manage yard vegetation in relation to their sociodemographic characteristics, values, and neighborhood/municipal governance. We then trace management decisions to vegetative outcomes.
Results/Conclusions Initial results indicate that household factors and governance, such as the presence of homeowner’s associations (HOAs) and neighborhood associations (NAs) in residential neighborhoods, influence land cover in residential parcels. Furthermore, we investigate how households’ yard management choices influence the proportion of spontaneous versus cultivated and native versus nonnative plants, as well as plants with “showy” flowers, all possible indicators of quality habitat for pollinators. Despite concerns regarding a vegetative homogenization of the American residential macrosystem at the continental scale, important differences in governance and individual traits at the household, parcel and neighborhood scales lead to vegetative heterogeneity within and across cities. These findings have implications for promotion of pollinator habitat within residential areas, as well as predicting future trends of land cover and vegetative structure change in urban residential lands, a growing land use type.
Results/Conclusions Initial results indicate that household factors and governance, such as the presence of homeowner’s associations (HOAs) and neighborhood associations (NAs) in residential neighborhoods, influence land cover in residential parcels. Furthermore, we investigate how households’ yard management choices influence the proportion of spontaneous versus cultivated and native versus nonnative plants, as well as plants with “showy” flowers, all possible indicators of quality habitat for pollinators. Despite concerns regarding a vegetative homogenization of the American residential macrosystem at the continental scale, important differences in governance and individual traits at the household, parcel and neighborhood scales lead to vegetative heterogeneity within and across cities. These findings have implications for promotion of pollinator habitat within residential areas, as well as predicting future trends of land cover and vegetative structure change in urban residential lands, a growing land use type.