By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s people are expected to live in urban areas which will become hubs for human development. Yet, urbanization creates challenges to human wellbeing, related to air, water and soil pollution and urban heat island effect among other environmental problems. Cities’ green infrastructure is suggested by UN New Urban Agenda as a way to tackle such environmental problems, providing important support & regulation ecosystem services, such as microclimate and air quality regulation and improving the resilience of cities to disasters and climate change. However, ecosystem services provision depends on ecosystem’s biodiversity, and this biodiversity is in turn affected by the same problems that challenge human life, added to other factors that influence ecosystem functioning, such as habitat fragmentation.
In this session we welcome all works on cryptogams focused on urban environments. These include nature-based solutions to tackle environmental challenges, use of ecological indicators, biodiversity as a key to support ecosystem services in this type of environments, modelling and also citizen science and stakeholder’s engagement and perceptions.
