Summary Data from urban metabolism studies from eight metropolitan regions across five continents, conducted in various years since 1965, are assembled in consistent units and compared. Together with studies of water, materials, energy, and nutrient flows from additional cities, the comparison provides insights into the changing metabolism of cities. Most cities studied exhibit increasing per capita metabolism with respect to water, wastewater, energy, and materials, although one city showed increasing efficiency for energy and water over the 1990s. Changes in solid waste streams and air pollutant emissions are mixed. The review also identifies metabolic processes that threaten the sustainability of cities. These include altered ground water levels, exhaustion of local materials, accumulation of toxic materials, summer heat islands, and irregular accumulation of nutrients. Beyond concerns over the sheer magnitudes of resource flows into cities, an understanding of these accumulation or storage processes in the urban metabolism is critical. Growth, which is inherently part of metabolism, causes changes in water stored in urban aquifers, materials in the building stock, heat stored in the urban canopy layer, and potentially useful nutrients in urban waste dumps. Practical reasons exist for understanding urban metabolism. The vitality of cities depends on spatial relationships with surrounding hinterlands and global resource webs. Increasing metabolism implies greater loss of farmland, forests, and species diversity; plus more traffic and more pollution. Urban policy makers should consider to what extent their nearest resources are close to exhaustion and, if necessary, appropriate strategies to slow exploitation. It is apparent from this review that metabolism data have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and interpretation issues exist due to lack of common conventions. Further urban metabolism studies are required.

The Changing Metabolism of Cities

Summary Biodiversity is responsible for the provision of many ecosystem services; human well-being is based on these services, and consequently on biodiversity. In soil, earthworms represent the largest component of the animal biomass and are commonly termed ‘ecosystem engineers’. This review considers the contribution of earthworms to ecosystem services through pedogenesis, development of soil structure, water regulation, nutrient cycling, primary production, climate regulation, pollution remediation and cultural services. Although there has been much research into the role of earthworms in soil ecology, this review demonstrates substantial gaps in our knowledge related in particular to difficulties in identifying the effects of species, land use and climate. The review aims to assist people involved in all aspects of land management, including conservation, agriculture, mining or other industries, to obtain a broad knowledge of earthworms and ecosystem services.

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A review of earthworm impact on soil function and ecosystem services

This article addresses a paradox: on the one hand, environmental sociology, as currently developed, is closely associated with the thesis that the classical sociological tradition is devoid of systematic insights into environmental problems; on the other hand, evidence of crucial classical contributions in this area, particularly in Marx, but also in Weber, Durkheim, and others, is too abundant to be convincingly denied. The nature of this paradox, its origins, and the means of transcending it are illustrated primarily through an analysis of Marx's theory of metabolic rift, which, it is contended, offers important classical foundations for environmental sociology.

/pdf/marx-s-theory-of-metabolic-rift-classical-foundations-for-4bvvgetljy.pdf

Marx's theory of metabolic rift : Classical foundations for environmental sociology

http://www.igbp.net/download/18.5831d9ad13275d51c098000258/1376382967821/Kennedy_et_al_2010_UM_urbanplanning_design.pdf

The study of urban metabolism and its applications to urban planning and design.

This paper introduces urban land teleconnections as a conceptual framework that explicitly links land changes to underlying urbanization dynamics. We illustrate how three key themes that are currently addressed separately in the urban sustainability and land change literatures can lead to incorrect conclusions and misleading results when they are not examined jointly: the traditional system of land classification that is based on discrete categories and reinforces the false idea of a rural–urban dichotomy; the spatial quantification of land change that is based on place-based relationships, ignoring the connections between distant places, especially between urban functions and rural land uses; and the implicit assumptions about path dependency and sequential land changes that underlie current conceptualizations of land transitions. We then examine several environmental “grand challenges” and discuss how urban land teleconnections could help research communities frame scientific inquiries. Finally, we point to existing analytical approaches that can be used to advance development and application of the concept.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/20/7687.full.pdf

Urban land teleconnections and sustainability

The metabolism of cities.

Water‐borne Outbreaks in the United States and Canada, and Their Significance

The Limits of the Earth

While there is much in this statistical decrease of which to be proud, it has unfortunately in many instances created in the minds of health and water works officials and even in the general public the impression that this disease has spent its mark. As a result of this accomplishment, laxity in control measures, too often fraught with public health hazard, has become apparent. It is probably true that, as control and preventive measures in water supply are perfected, the cost of carrying on such functions may be lessened and savings from such economies may properly be diverted to other forms of public health work, but laxity in control, especially of such primary food supplies as milk and water, is frequently reflected in sudden and intense outbreaks of enteric disease. Their human and material

Abel Wolman

Papers

The metabolism of cities.

Water‐borne Outbreaks in the United States and Canada, and Their Significance

The Limits of the Earth

The Significance of Waterborne Typhoid Fever Outbreaks, 1920–1930

Housing for Health