Abstract
Climate change is challenging the sustained delivery of ecosystem services from urban agriculture. Extreme, prolonged drought in combination with high heat events affect urban crop production due to limited water availability and affect environmental management and adaptation to environmental conditions. In this study, we use urban community gardens in central coast California as a system to investigate how people are adapting their management behaviors over three time periods—before, during and after the longest drought in California’s recent history. We specifically ask how behavioral change is impacted by water policies and gardener characteristics (including gardening experience, formal education, drought concern, and relationship to nature). Through structural equation modeling and multivariate analyses, we show that nature relatedness and gardening experience impact drought concern which in turn impact behavioral change, and potentially gardener’s ability to sustainably manage water and to adapt to drought conditions. Planting motivations are also important, influencing people’s adoption and retention of practices over time. Yet where concern may be absent, water policies are able to promote and maintain behavioral change and conservation-based practice adoption. Thus, environmental awareness and experience in combination with policies are needed to promote and support proactive behavioral change and adaptation to create resilient urban food production systems under climate change.
Highlights
Urban agriculture supports urban food systems and provides important urban ecosystem services (Barthel et al 2015, Lin et al 2015, Wiskerke 2015)
Through structural equation modeling and multivariate analyses, we show that nature relatedness and gardening experience impact drought concern which in turn impact behavioral change, and potentially gardener’s ability to sustainably manage water and to adapt to drought conditions
We studied urban gardener management behaviors as an indication of climate change adaptation by looking at reported practices used at three time periods—before, during, and after the drought
Summary
Urban agriculture supports urban food systems and provides important urban ecosystem services (Barthel et al 2015, Lin et al 2015, Wiskerke 2015). Urban agriculture is increasingly vulnerable to environmental change impacting cities, including more frequent and intense drought and heat (Wortman and Lovell 2013, Lin and Egerer 2020). Such seasonal patterns of weather extremes linked to climate change are reducing access to—while increasing the demand for—water inputs in urban agriculture (Milly et al 2008, Hunt et al 2013). Limited water availability and access challenge plant maintenance by restricting water available to already heat and water stressed plants These environmental impacts could reduce the sustainability of urban agriculture by negatively affecting crop production (Tardieu et al 2000) and natural resource conservation (Eriksen-Hamel and Danso 2010). Gardeners have already adopted water-saving ground cover and soil amendment practices, both in times of drought and not, which should improve soil moisture conservation (Gregory et al 2015)
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