This is critically important because residential areas continue to expand, and their influence on biodiversity and what scientists call ecosystem services-such as conserving and filtering water, cooling hot spaces, and retaining carbon-is poorly understood. Our study is one of the most detailed scientific investigations into the broad ecological functioning of the suburban landscapes in which 51 percent of Americans now live. The project aims to measure-across yards and across large regions-how the management of residential single-family house lots influences the structure, biodiversity, and function of residential ecosystems. Teams in all six cities are part of a nationwide study nicknamed the Yard Futures Project, which continues through 2020. Since then, similar teams have surveyed yards in exactly the same way in metropolitan Baltimore, Minneapolis-St. Before leaving, they created a detailed sketch map of the yard. They deployed small strips of special resins, designed to capture soil nutrients, that they will collect on a future visit. They measured the species and diameter of every tree, set traps to measure the diversity and abundance of bees and crawling insects, and took soil samples. Like an eco-SWAT team, they noted every plant species and the lawn or garden feature in which they occurred. In a suburban Boston yard, Emily Tanner and Brett Barnard install a small Plant Root Simulator (PRS™).īy the time people in the neighborhood had headed off to their workdays two hours later, Megan had joined up with three other team members for a day-long, intensive survey of a single yard in a nearby town.

Biodiversity pro manual