Notes on the evolution and organization of the urban ecosystem

Abstract

The continual spread of human settlements over the world’s surface has transformed the natural environment on a global scale. Human’s intervention has changed primary ecosystems (protoecosystems or euecosystems) into anthropoecosystems. The spread of urban ecosystems, cultivated surfaces (agroecosystems), and various areas differentiated by their level of anthropization has facilitated the progressive reduction of euecosystems. The evolution of urban areas over the course of history with transformations of cities and surrounding territory, has created very complex mosaics. A proper study of the city, drawing together historical, cultural, social, and other factors, as well as abiotic ones (urban climate, soil, water, air), requires appropriate, uniform terminology for expressing the complex relationships existing among these factors. We therefore propose that the city (or metropolis) be considered as a set of ecosystems, a “synecosystem”. The entire urban area should be termed a “synbiotope”. It is divided into numerous partial biotopes (macro-, meso- and microbiotopes), the result of modifications wrought through the historical and cultural vicissitudes of the human population. Urban biotopes host not only humans, but also a characteristic vegetable and animal component, the “biosyncoenosis”, formed of numerous plant and animal communities, selected on the basis of the environmental conditions of the individual biotopes, which differ from each other in structure, dynamics, age, and position in the urban space. This terminology should facilitate study of the biotic component and its connection to the urban territory, as well as interpretation of results obtained in the different disciplines in terms of the human population’s quality of life.