Urban Ecology

Specialist Group: Urban Ecology

The GfÖ-Specialist Group Urban Ecology focuses on the importance of urban areas for nature and people. The Specialist Group invites all scientists and practitioners who investigate, plan, or design urban areas to interact and exchange experiences. Today, cities are faced with huge environmental, economic, and social challenges. These include—but are not limited to—declines in biodiversity, extreme weather events, various land-use conflicts, and the loss of human-nature experiences. All of these factors deplete the provision of urban ecosystem services, upon which the liveability of the world’s cities and the well-being of its residents depend. Therefore, the Specialist Group aims to contribute our knowledge of the multi-faceted drivers and interactions in urban areas to a sustainable management and use of urban ecosystems for the wellbeing of both people and nature.

Specifically, the Specialist Group Urban Ecology aims to

• hold regular urban ecology sessions at GfÖ Annual Meetings;
• invite keynote speakers to present their inspiring research and novel ideas at GfÖ Annual Meetings;
• cooperate with urban ecological science groups in other countries;
• organize special issues on urban ecological topics in Basic and Applied Ecology and other journals;
• offer workshops and small conferences on specific urban ecological topics supplementing our sessions at GfÖ Annual Meetings;
• provide an interdisciplinary platform for everyone interested in urban ecology to share ideas and initiate cooperation.

Our next proposed activity will be a session themed “Urban ecology’s past, present and future: Researching solutions for tomorrow’s challenges” at the 2021 GfÖ Annual Meeting in Braunschweig.

Feel free to write to us: urbanecol@gfoe.org