A review on coastal urban ecology: research gaps, challenges, and needs

Graells, Giorgia, Nakamura, Nao, Celis-Diez, Juan L., Lagos, Nelson A., Marquet, Pablo A., Pliscoff, Patricio, and Gelcich, Stefan (2021) A review on coastal urban ecology: research gaps, challenges, and needs. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8. 617897.

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Abstract

Coastal urban areas have dramatically increased during the last decades, however, coastal research integrating the impacts and challenges facing urban areas is still scarce. To examine research advances and critical gaps, a review of the literature on coastal urban ecology was performed. Articles were selected following a structured decision tree and data were classified into study disciplines, approaches, type of analysis, main research objectives, and Pickett's paradigms in-, of-, and for- the city, among other categories. From a total of 237 publications, results show that most of the research comes from the USA, China, and Australia, and has been carried out mostly in large cities with populations between 1 and 5 million people. Focus has been placed on ecological studies, spatial and quantitative analysis and pollution in coastal urban areas. Most of the studies on urban ecology in coastal zones were developed at nearshore terrestrial environments and only 22.36% included the marine ecosystem. Urban ecological studies in coastal areas have mainly been carried out under the paradigm in the city with a focus on the disciplines of biology and ecology. Results suggest a series of disciplinary, geographical, and approach biases which can present a number of risks. Foremost among these is a lack of knowledge on social dimensions which can impact on sustainability. A key risk relates to the fact that lessons and recommendations of research are mainly from developed countries and large cities which might have different institutional, planning and cultural settings compared to developing and mid-income countries. Scientific research on coastal urban areas needs to diversify toward an ecology of and for the cities, in order to support coastal development in a diversity of countries and settings.

Item ID: 70393
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2296-7745
Keywords: coastal cities, coastal urban ecology, coastal urbanization, marine urbanization, urban ecology paradigms
Copyright Information: Copyright © 2021 Graells, Nakamura, Celis-Diez, Lagos, Marquet, Pliscoff and Gelcich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Date Deposited: 22 Apr 2022 02:02
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