Protecting Natural Areas During Development: Four Spatial Considerations to Maximize their Benefits

The preservation, maintenance, protection, restoration and enhancement of habitats for wild species.

Currently, our clientele come from a continuum of communities ranging from rural to metropolitan areas. Rapid growth in population centers has resulted in loss of land available for agriculture and natural resources. In order to create a balance between population centers, agricultural land and natural areas, Extension must help to plan and maintain sustainable urban and suburban communities.

Urban ecology is defined as the study of structure, dynamics, and processes in urban ecological systems. Urban ecology is the study of the relationships of human and nonhuman organisms in urban areas, the interactions of these organisms with the native and built physical environment, and the effects of these relationships on the fluxes of energy, materials, and information within individual urban systems and between urban and nonurban systems.

Note: In March 2021, the UF/IFAS School of Forest Resources and Conservation (SFRC) changed its name to the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences (FFGS). Older publications will still use the older name.