Urban ecosystems

There is a really great interview with Os Schmitz the Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. The interview follows his research on the timescale needed to recover a damaged ecosystems. His research suggests that damaged ecosystems can recover in about a lifetime rather than a much longer period of time. He goes on comment in the interview about the role that urban people and places have in the larger scheme. "It’s really important to get [urban people] to think that they're part of an ecosystem -- be it an urban or other ecosystem-- rather than simply be drivers of ecosystems. When we restore parks, or when we think about creating green spaces, we have to be careful and get our values in order and identify collectively what it is that we mean by green space. For example, I can imagine that we could restore shrub lands in cityscapes. We could also have small forests throughout cityscapes."