title: Urban ecosystem modeling and global change: potential for rational urban management and emissions mitigation.
abstract: Urbanization is a strong and extensive driver that causes environmental pollution and climate change from local to global scale. Modeling cities as ecosystems has been initiated by a wide range of scientists as a key to addressing challenging problems concomitant with urbanization. In this paper, 'urban ecosystem modeling (UEM)' is defined in an inter-disciplinary context to acquire a broad perception of urban ecological properties and their interactions with global change. Furthermore, state-of-the-art models of urban ecosystems are reviewed, categorized as top-down models (including materials/energy-oriented models and structure-oriented models), bottom-up models (including land use-oriented models and infrastructure-oriented models), or hybrid models thereof. Based on the review of UEM studies, a future framework for explicit UEM is proposed based the integration of UEM approaches of different scales, guiding more rational urban management and efficient emissions mitigation.
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Shaoqing
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: chenb@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Towson, MD 21252, USA; Advanced Systems Analysis, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Brian D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Fath
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002947:Cities; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014507:Urbanization
keywords: Emissions mitigation; Global change; Urban ecosystem modeling; Urbanization