Bioindication-Based Approaches for Sustainable Management of Urban Ecosystems

Abstract

Urbanized areas are covering less than 3% of the land, but the majority of Earth’s population and industry is concentrated at these territories. There is an urgent need for development of a comprehensive approach to the assessment of environmental quality in these areas. Bioindication allows estimating the entire complex of negative factors simultaneously. However, there are still large gaps in our knowledge of the urban ecosystem functioning. This chapter aimed to review the existing approaches to the bioindication of urban areas, i.e., microbial and plant bioindicators, as well as complexity of urban ecosystem, soil and its types, anthropogenic impacts, pollutants, effect on microbial community, other existing problems in this field and suggest the possible ways to solve them. The development of reliable bioindicators used on the basis of systematic approach would contribute greatly to rational land use and sustainable functioning of the urban environment.