Alberti - 9875041. Urbanization is a pervasive, widely distributed process that is occurring widely throughout the world. Urban development has wide ranging impacts on the occurrence of natural habitats, energy flow and nutrient cycling. Understanding these effects of ecosystem characteristics is critical for human well being and the persistence of natural and human-effected ecosystems. This project involves an empirical investigation of the effects of urban development patterns on ecological conditions in the Greater Seattle Area. It focuses on population and community dynamics of native and introduced organisms. It will examine urban development and its impact on an urban to rural gradient in Greater Seattle. The central hypothesis is that ecological conditions in an urban-to-rural gradient are influenced by urban form, land-use intensity, land-use heterogeneity, and cover connectivity. It will be tested for bird, plant, and aquatic-macroinvertebrate communities.
