The effect of urbanization on the aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity of urban streams

• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Carolina Oliveira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33495
• topic: Urbanization; Urban biodiversity; Urban streams; Ecosystem services

Urban environments are continuously growing across the world, and this has an impact on ecosystems and biodiversity that cannot be overlooked. Stream ecosystems are particularly important as well as vulnerable, and not only are they affected by the surrounding urban environment, but the reverse is also true, as city inhabitants' lives are improved through the ecosystem services that streams perform. In this study, aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity of nine urban streams was identified and correlated with intensity of urbanization, measured by the percentage of impervious surface in east study site. New information was added to the known biodiversity of this region, and it was confirmed that urbanization impacts urban stream ecosystems in complex ways, with significant correlations obtained for global biodiversity, plants and birds. These impacts vary across taxonomic groups, being negative for most groups but moderately positive for birds. The proliferation of invasive species was determined particularly relevant and also tied with urbanization itself and the intensity of it. It was confirmed that not only do its impacts alter and shape urban streams' communities, they can also change their ability to perform ecosystem services.