Research

Urban agroecosystems are critical for biodiversity conservation, fresh food access, and improving global agricultural sustainability. Understanding the way that these agroecosystems function is paramount to science and society. However, most of our scientific knowledge of agroecosystem ecology is in rural agricultural systems. Our team uses urban community gardens as a laboratory to unravel complex socio-ecological relationships, and as a classroom to teach student scientists and citizens about agroecology. 

Our research in urban agroecosystems takes place in gardens in the California central coast that vary in local management practices and surrounding landscape characteristics. We investigate the ecological interactions and processes in urban gardens that provide ecosystem services like pollination, pest control, as well as soil health, climate regulation, and human well-being. 

Our vision is to build a scientific understanding of urban garden ecology, to disseminate management information to gardeners, and to improve urban agricultural sustainability for the future. Read more about our urban garden research at https://www.urbangardenecology.com/.

Our coffee agroforestry research is motivated by the overarching goal of understanding how management practices influence ecological community assembly, maintenance of biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Much of this work has focused on diversity of insects, in particular ants, among the most diverse and abundant insects in the tropics. We have done many studies looking at how management intensification, including a loss of ant diversity and loss of connectivity between coffee plants and trees, influences the role of ants as providers of pest control in coffee agroforestry systems. We have also studied coffee pollination services, and the importance of insectivorous birds in a variety of coffee management systems. 

Coffee is among the most valuable traded commodities from the developing world involving between 14-25 million people in production. Thus understanding how coffee farm and landscape management affects diversity and community structure of ants and other insects is critical. Most of the lab’s coffee research has taken place in southern Mexico.