Grand challenge: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Enhancing food access and ecosystem services for equitable human and ecosystem health in high population areas

Identify how the built environment can contribute to a more sustainable and climate resilient world for urban populations across the economic spectrum
  • Develop and sustain green spaces in urban/peri-urban areas encompassing parks, community gardens, botanic gardens, turf, and green infrastructure
  • Improve strategies to select and maintain trees and other plants in urban environments
  • Monitor and promote soil health and remediation in developed landscapes
  • Enhance and promote the ecosystem services of built environments such as erosion and flood control, habitat for wildlife, and carbon storage
  • Promote the human wellness benefits of greenspaces
Foster sustainable urban agriculture practices that contribute to human health, economic viability, and resilient, equitable food systems
  • Facilitate the vitality of diverse and effective urban agriculture practices in soil, raised beds, rooftop gardens, and protected environments
  • Improve the sustainability and economic viability of production of high nutrient density food in protected and controlled environments such as high tunnels, greenhouses, rooftop, and vertical farms (Controlled Environment Agriculture)

Research highlights: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Research spotlight: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Urban Plant Ecology Lab explores biodiversity, human-nature interactions

Under the leadership of Aaron Sexton, our new Urban Plant Ecology Lab seeks to understand how urban ecosystem management influences biodiversity patterns and processes. Research focuses around urban plant and animal communities how they influence human-nature interactions. Research topics include how urban community gardens affect pollinators and natural enemies of pests, restoration of plant-pollinator communites, urban heat island effects on timing of flowering, and impacts of urban wildfires. Techniques range from ecological field work, large-scale data synthesis, and socioecological research including collaborations around New York State, New York City and in Europe.

Research spotlight: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Plants, pollen and people - assessing ecological services & 'disservices'

The Katz Lab focuses on modeling airborne pollen concentrations, quantifying the cooling effects of urban trees, and applying ecological concepts to more effectively use remote sensing for urban tree identification. "My goal is to generate the ecological knowledge necessary to address plant-related public health problems," said Dan Katz, assistant professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science. "To do so, I measure ecological processes using field studies, scale from individual plants to landscapes with remote sensing, and combine these into models related to ecosystem services and disservices."

Research spotlight: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) fuels urban, vertical farms

CEA is an advanced and intensive form of hydroponically-based agriculture using sophisticated lighting and environmental control systems that help make indoor farming more efficient and sustainable. See also: Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) – a public-private partnership led by Cornell and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to integrate advanced energy-efficient LED lighting with improved environmental controls for more efficient and sustainable greenhouse production.

Research spotlight: Urban plants and ecosystem services

Reducing climate risk from urban wildfires

In 2024, several large wildfires scorched dozens of wooded acres in several boroughs of New York City – a region previously thought to be relatively safe from fire risk. Because such fires are so rare, these sites offer a unique and exciting opportunity to study changes in plant communities caused by fire and develop ecological management strategies to prevent even more dangerous fires in the future by reducing the fire fuel-load. In 2025, our Urban Plant Ecology Lab began surveying two of the largest NYC wildfire sites – in Prospect Park in Brooklyn & Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan, and is already seeing some interesting results!

urban ecology montage
dan katz
group looking at CEA planting techniques in greenhouse
scorched tree researchers and ground-nesting bee