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Field and remotely sensed measures of soil and vegetation carbon and nitrogen across an urbanization gradient in the Boston metropolitan area

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Abstract

Understanding the impact of urbanization on terrestrial biogeochemistry is critical for addressing society’s grand challenge of global environmental change. We used field observations and remotely sensed data to quantify the effects of urbanization on vegetation and soils across a 100-km urbanization gradient extending from Boston to Harvard Forest and Worcester, MA. At the field-plot scale, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was positively correlated with aboveground biomass (AGB) and foliar nitrogen (N) content and negatively correlated with impervious surface fraction. Unlike previous studies, we found no significant relationship between NDVI or impervious surface area (ISA) fraction and foliar N concentration. Patterns in foliar N appeared to be driven more strongly by changes in species composition rather than phenotypic plasticity across the urbanization gradient. For forest and non-residential development, soil nitrogen content increased with urban intensity. In contrast, residential land had consistently high soil N content across the gradient of urbanization. When field observations were scaled-up to the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), we found that soil and vegetation N content were negatively correlated with ISA fraction, an indicator of urban intensity. Our results demonstrated the importance of accounting for the influence of impervious surfaces when scaling field data across urban ecosystems. The combination of field data with remote sensing holds promise for disentangling the complex interactions that drive biogeochemical cycling in urbanizing landscapes. Empirical data that accurately characterize variations in urban biogeochemistry are critical to gain a mechanistic understanding of urban ecosystem function and to guide policy makers and planners in developing ecologically sensitive development strategies.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Science Foundation and US Forest Service Urban Long Term Research Area Exploratory Awards (ULTRA-Ex) program (DEB-0948857), a National Science Foundation CAREER award (DEB-1149471), and Boston University. We are grateful to Marc-Andre Giasson for his help with sample preparation and instrumental analysis; and Max Brondfield and Byungman Yoon for their assistance in field data collection.

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  1. Department of Earth & Environment, Boston University, 685 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Preeti Rao, Lucy R. Hutyra & Steve M. Raciti

  2. Department of Biology, Boston University, 5 Cummington Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Adrien C. Finzi

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  1. Preeti Rao
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Correspondence to Lucy R. Hutyra.

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Online resource 1

Percent of total transect area in different land-use categories in the two transects. The north transect had a total area of 96 km2 and the south transect a total area of 98 km2. These land-use categories were merged to form the three land-use classes, forest, residential and other-developed, used in this study. (DOCX 12.9 kb)

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Percent foliar biomass for each species or species-category in the three urban classes. The species- or category-specific foliar biomass was estimated as percent of the total plot foliar biomass. (DOCX 12 kb)

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Rao, P., Hutyra, L.R., Raciti, S.M. et al. Field and remotely sensed measures of soil and vegetation carbon and nitrogen across an urbanization gradient in the Boston metropolitan area. Urban Ecosyst 16, 593–616 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-013-0291-6

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