RESEARCH

Urban agroecosystems are increasingly important for biodiversity conservation, fresh food access for people, and improving global agricultural sustainability. Understanding the way that these agroecosystems function is thus paramount to science and society. However, most of our scientific knowledge of agroecosystem ecology is in rural agricultural systems. Our interdisciplinary research team uses urban community gardens as a laboratory for scientific investigations to unravel complex ecological relationships, and as a classroom to teach student scientists and citizens about agroecology. Our research in urban agroecosystems takes place in 25 gardens in the California central coast that vary in local management practices and surrounding landscape characteristics. We investigate the ecological interactions and processes in urban gardens that provide ecosystem services like pollination, pest control, and climate regulation and also benefit human well-being. Our vision is to build a scientific understanding of urban garden ecology, to disseminate management information to urban gardeners, and to improve urban agricultural sustainability for people and the environment. Read more about our urban garden research at https://www.urbangardenecology.com/.

Our coffee agroforestry research is motivated by the overarching goal of understanding how management practices influence ecological community assembly, maintenance of biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Much of this work has focused on diversity of insects, in particular ants, and their role as providers of pest control in coffee agroforestry systems. Ants are among the most diverse and abundant insects in the tropics. Coffee is among the most valuable traded commodities from the developing world involving between 14-25 million people in production. Thus understanding how coffee farm and landscape management affects diversity and community structure of ants and other insects is critical. Most of the lab’s coffee research has taken place in southern Mexico.

Grazing management can profoundly affect dung beetle biodiversity and function in agroecosystems. Dung beetles offer a suite of ecosystem services, including secondary seed dispersal, decreasing populations of flies that act as pests, pollinating dung scented flowers and influencing nutrient cycling in grazed pasturelands. Dung beetles bury dung, thereby decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from dung. Grazing management and landscape conditions influence dung beetle diversity and abundance. Moreover, while it is clear that dung beetles influence nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, dung beetles effects on carbon cycling are less clear. When dung beetles incorporate animal dung into the soil, this influences both nutrient cycling and the soil microbial community, with potential impacts on soil organic carbon content and nutrient flux. Our research looks at the effects of grazing and landscape management on dung beetle communities, and subsequent effects on the soil microbial community and soil organic carbon content in organic ranches in the central coast of California.