Urban Ecology

When we are asked where we lived before moving to Grinnell, my wife Liz and I often give the specific--yet teasingly uninformative--reply that we've lived within 3 miles (~ 5 km) from Interstate 80 for the last 30 years.(Deeper history: I was an "I-10" child in the LA area, and Liz is from Oregon; I-84 was her home highway.) Though our past and present I-80 residences roughly share a latitude, Salt Lake City (PhD studies at the University of Utah), Berkeley (postdoctoral research at the University of California), and Grinnell (real jobs) don't seem much alike. Aside from the obvious differences in the dominant view (the Wasatch Front, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a whole lot of corn and beans, respectively), our third I-80 residence is on the small side.

The Joe Rosenfield Center at Grinnell College-
one of Grinnell's tallest buildings and a whole lot of masonry

Hence my students in Grinnell College's BIO 368 ([advanced] Ecology) raised their eyebrows a bit in response to their Urban Ecology lab assignment, in which I ask them to design and complete independent projects on the distribution and/or abundance of organisms on the Grinnell College campus. Grinnell doesn't fit everyone's image of "urban," but as our neighbors hastened to point out when we arrived, it's not the country. The distribution and performance of organisms (and the movements of energy and matter) here clearly depend strongly on variation in conditions and resources created by humans acting as mutualists, enemies, disturbance agents, and “ecosystem engineers” in this built environment.

Most of the next several posts will give brief summaries of published articles that are relevant to my student's projects. First, though, I'd better try the assignment myself.