Urban gardens provide a variety of ecosystem services in cities including harboring biodiversity, improving food security, and fostering community. They also have a history of recurrence following harsh economic times, ie. the victory gardens of World Wars I and II. This research explored the dynamics of land-use change across three Northern California counties in order to understand why gardens sometimes disappear after economic recovery, while others remain, as well as the consequences of these changes to biodiversity and ecosystem services.  

During the fellowship, a mathematical model of land-use change was developed that combined social theory on land-use change with ecological models adapted to represent economic markets and the social spread of land-use types. Specifically, the model tests how land insecurity and economic markets influences transitions between urban gardens, vacant lots and development. The model results were then compared to a land-use history dataset compiled by the fellow by assessing historical satellite images of land-use change in Salinas, Santa Cruz and San Jose, CA. The fellow also combined land-use history data with temporal U.S. home ownership and household income data from the American Community Survey to assess the effects of land insecurity and wealth on the stability of urban gardens. This project is ongoing in collaboration with the mentors of the project and Stephan Barthel of the Stockholm Resilience Center, with a manuscript in preparation for submission.   

To assess how land-use history influences biodiversity, the fellow partnered with Stacy Philpott, Brenda Lin and Shalene Jha who have collected urban garden biodiversity data in the study regions previously listed. The fellow assessed how urban landscape characteristics and garden management strategies contribute to species rarity of crops, ornamentals, ladybird beetles, birds and bees. Age of garden significantly impacts species rarity, suggesting that frequent land-use transitions could benefit biodiversity in urban gardens. This project is ongoing, with a manuscript currently submitted. 

In addition, the fellow conducted two workshops with high school students in Growing Justice, a group of children of farmworkers that use urban gardens as subsistence agriculture in California. The fellow collaborated with the students and their umbrella organization, the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), to develop and execute (i) a biodiversity survey of two community gardens and (ii) a computer workshop analyzing the history of land-use using Google Earth historical aerial imagery in and surrounding the two gardens where biodiversity was surveyed. These results were combined with oral histories of students in an interactive flash animation that recounts the history of land-use change from the perspective of young people growing up within it. The flash animation is available here: http://weiyingo.blogspot.com/2018/10/land-use-change-workshop-with-growing.html

 This web animation was also shared by the students in a mobile art exhibit with the goal of educating the public on issues related to food insecurity, housing costs and safety. This work was also covered in a news release: https://t.co/7zULSSLIWj

The fellow achieved her training goals in the fellowship period. The fellow published two papers from her dissertation and presented research at SESYNC (Socio-ecological Synthesis Center), ESA (Ecological Society of America), and a Gordon Research Conference by invitation. SESYNC also invited the fellow to participate in an IHOPE workshop on use of archaeological data to describe urban development and sustainability. A F-1000 Prime recommendation was awarded for her published dissertation work. The fellow applied for and received a tenure-track position in Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College where she will continue her work in agroecology. 

Last Modified: 09/11/2019
Modified by: Theresa W Ong