Tuesday, August 4, 2009: 1:30 PM-5:00 PM
Picuris, Albuquerque Convention Center
OOS 21 - Sustainable Cities: The Potential of Urban Regions for Advancing Ecology, Conservation and Education
This session will feature a combination of speakers representing the growing field of urban ecology and conservation science research in the USA. Following brief introductory remarks by the moderator (c. 5 min), we envision a series of talks (15 min each), showcasing cutting-edge ecological research spanning levels of organization from molecules to entire ecosystems, as well as social research aimed at integrating human and natural systems in urban regions. The session will be divided into two sections, with earlier speakers focusing on the conservation, research and educational/outreach opportunities that urban ecosystems provide, and featuring a variety of new research approaches. Later talks will discuss the potential for linking these ecological components of urban landscapes with social systems to facilitate sustainability in human-dominated landscapes. The first speaker (Katti) will illustrate the potential for using behavioral and evolutionary approaches in urban ecological research and biodiversity conservation. The second talk (Munshi-South) will present new molecular genetics approaches to mammalian conservation in urban regions, and will highlight the unique opportunities available in these areas for merging ecological research with education/outreach. The third talk (Gormezano) will introduce new methods in urban carnivore research, including the use of scat detection dogs. Following these molecular, individual and population-level perspectives on urban ecological research will be a synthetic talk describing past efforts and recent advances in our ability to understand and predict the community-level responses of natural systems to increasing urbanization (Blair). The second section of the session will focus on the potential of human-dominated systems for integrating ecological and social issues to achieve sustainability. This section will open with our fifth speaker (Machlis), who will introduce the Human-Ecosystem Model and its application for environmental and social problem-solving in urban regions. This talk will be followed by a case-study approach to merging ecological research with education and outreach, featuring urban carnivore research in New York (Weckel). The final speaker (Morse) will highlight new perspectives on integrating ecological and social systems to achieve global sustainability.
Organizer:	Catherine E. Burns, University of Maine
Co-organizer:	Jason Munshi-South, Baruch College, City University of New York
Moderator:	Catherine E. Burns, University of Maine
1:30 PM	OOS 21-1		Topic: Studying the impacts of urbanization using novel behavioral and evolutionary approaches Madhusudan Katti, California State University Fresno
1:50 PM	OOS 21-2		Landscape genetics of white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) in New York City: preliminary results from a model system for investigating the evolutionary implications of urbanization Jason Munshi-South, Baruch College, City University of New York, Catherine E. Burns, University of Maine
2:10 PM	OOS 21-3		Birds, butterflies, mammals, and vegetation: Community level responses to urbanization across three ecoregions of the United States Robert Blair, University of Minnesota, Derric Pennington, University of Minnesota
2:30 PM	OOS 21-4		Topic: The human ecology of urban resilience Gary Machlis, University of Idaho
2:50 PM	OOS 21-5		Topic: Linking social and ecological systems; lessons from interdisciplinary research Wayde Morse, Auburn University
3:10 PM			Break
3:20 PM	OOS 21-6		Can food security support biodiversity? Evidence from Belo Horizonte, Brazil M. Jahi Chappell, Cornell University
3:40 PM	OOS 21-7		The potential for urban areas to support biodiversity: Overcoming barriers to change landscaping behaviors Claudia M. Lewis, Independent Environmental Education Consultant
4:00 PM	OOS 21-8		Birds, habitat, an urban gradient, and socioeconomic factors: Exploring the relationships in a residential landscape Susannah B. Lerman, University of Massachusetts, Paige S. Warren, University of Massachusetts
4:20 PM	OOS 21-9		Acknowledging the city: New methodologies for integrating the human component into long-term ecological research in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER and the Nascent Chilean Itser Network Alexandria K. Poole, University of North Texas, Diego A. Sotomayor, Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Chile and Universidad de La Serena, Ricardo Rozzi, University of North Texas and Universty of Magallanes - Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Chile, Christopher B. Anderson, Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity and Omora Park - University of Magallanes

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See more of The 94th ESA Annual Meeting (August 2 -- 7, 2009)