Urban Agriculture - Science topic

Despite the high yields and reduced water usage, why it uncompetitive against traditional farming?

How can the valuable insights gained from these measurements be strategically applied to not only improve the sustainability of our environment but also elevate the effectiveness of urban agriculture practices?

To measure sustainability and food security, what parameters need to be included while surveying urban agriculture? or is it possible to assess the data regarding the food security of a specific metropolitan area and its sustainability by a survey? If yes, what kind of data and models must be incorporated?

Green roofs are becoming increasingly popular among researchers, engineers and related construction stakeholders to mitigate food crisis, Urban heat island effect, rainfall scarcity and enhancement of thermal comfort in urban ecosystems. Substrate is the most important component of a green roof. Our research team has carried out an extended systematic review regarding all the types of green roof research in the past 50 years and published a research article in Frontiers in Built Environment:

In your perspective, apart from the fields mentioned in our research article (link given above),

Hi,

I am working on real-time monitoring of plant moisture content and adjusting (optimizing) the irrigation in hydroponic farms with the help of spectroscopy in order to avoid water stress.

For the reference moisture content of plant/leaf, is there any standard method that I could follow? If yes, what is the number or name of the method?

I looked into the literature and I ended up with two methods that were mostly used by the other but I couldn't find the motivation for choosing one over the other.

1) Collecting leaves, and oven drying for several hours (different papers suggested different hours but mostly 48-72h), at 105-degree celsius (while some papers used lower temperature)

Mc = ((Wc - Wd)/Wc )*100

where Mc indicates the percentage of moisture, while Wc and Wd represent the initial weight and the final constant weight of leaves, respectively.

2) Collecting leaves, and hydrating them to get turgid weight. Oven dry at 80-degree C for 24h

RWC (%) = [(W-DW) / (TW-DW)] x 100,

Where W is fresh weight, TW is turgid weight and DW is the dry weight.

Thank you in advance for your help.

In the context of ongoing climate change, the ongoing process of global warming, environmental pollution, the health of people living in the city, urban parks and other green spaces have a very important role. Studies show that urban green areas also play an important role in the number of bees and other pollinating insects, in reducing the extinction of these insects that are important for agricultural crop production. Many bees and other pollinating insects die in agricultural fields where too many pesticides and other crop protection chemicals are used. Urban parks, urban gardens and other green areas play an important role in protecting the status of bee populations. Besides, green areas, urban parks significantly reduce the air temperature in summer during hot weather. This makes the air quality better, the temperature lower during hot weather, the air more humid and cleaner. Urban parks and gardens therefore play a key role in terms of shaping the biodiversity level of natural ecosystems of green areas in cities, in conurbations and also in large metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, in some cities, the trend of so-called concreting instead of afforestation still prevails. This has continued to be the case over the last decade or so in the country in which I operate. It is only recently that the local authorities of some cities have started to pay attention to these issues. In order to reduce the scale of the summer drought in cities, they began to reduce the scale and frequency of lawn mowing and in city parks. Flower meadows have finally been created instead of mowing lawns. Bird nesting boxes and insect houses began to be erected in city parks. In some cities, areas of concrete pavements that were too large began to be dismantled and green belts increased, etc. Finally, after many years of appeals to city authorities by ecologists, naturalists, biologists, but also citizens of many other professional specialisations, environmentally and climate-conscious city dwellers, something has started to happen in terms of protecting the biodiversity of natural ecosystems in urban green areas and also increasing green areas in cities and urban metropolises. Rainwater catchment systems are being set up in urban housing estates. Rainwater and/or water from sewage treatment plants is used to water urban lawns, flower meadows, urban parks and other green areas in cities. There is a return of moa to the establishment of home gardens, with residents creating flower gardens but also vegetable and fruit gardens. Nowadays, rising food prices and the developing energy and food crisis can reinforce these positive trends. In addition, more and more environmentally and climate-conscious city dwellers are cycling instead of using combustion cars. There are more and more positive developments. But these are only the beginnings of the above mentioned positive, pro-environmental and pro-climate changes.

In view of the above I address the following questions to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

What do you think?

What do you think about this topic?

Please reply,

I invite you all to discuss,

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

I have been able to load my data in Rstudio and checked the structure to make sure that the variable is there, which it is. However, when I plot the RDA it is not plotting my last environmental variable, I have 5 environmental variables, the first two are population density and human footprint index, the next three are all the habitat setting explanatory variables - Urban, Agricultural and Wild, the variables are all being plotted and account for apart from "Wild". What could be the possible reasons for this?

Dears,

Given their clever nature, do you think goats are good fits for urban livestock agriculture.

From sculpting the Himalayas and shaping the planes to cultivating civilisation water has been the most essential resource for building civilisations. Rainwater was harvested in India using lakes, wells, bands, step-wells etc. The question is what is the role of water in shaping a city. With the emphasis on paths and connecting roads acting as rainwater channels feeding the groundwater recharge and storage bodies. It further dives into why planned cities like Harappa did not survive the test of time, whereas organically developed cities did. The question hopes to critically analyse the reasons for severe water shortages in planned and semi-planned cities like Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi. hoping to provide some guidelines for eco-friendly development at various levels of planning and design. New methods inspired by traditional techniques for efficient rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge e.g building and using step-wells for water storage instead of overhead tanks. The focus is on developing guidelines for proper rainwater management systems for cities and urban areas. by adopting groundwater recharge techniques that could integrate with the present urban fabric.

In 2050, our global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion, with 68% of us living in urban cities. In order to feed this massive population, we will need to increase our agricultural output by 70% over current levels. Just to put this number into perspective, we will need to grow more food in the next 35 to 40 years than the previous 10,000 years combined.

The agricultural industry is called upon to innovate and play an increasingly vital role to feed the world in the future.

Your thoughts and views are invited, in light of the role to be played by vertical farming/ indoor urban farming.

I'm interested in compiling information regarding ideas/mechanis/projects at national/regional/local level of different countries regarding the protection of ancient/veteran/habitat trees by paying/compensating for ecosystem services provision to land owners.

I'm interested in promoting this kind of conservation in Portugal but I'm lacking examples from other regions.

Thank you all in advance for the help.

I am doing research on Urban Agriculture, and I would like to know which theory that I can base in order to examine Urban Agriculture.

Does anyone know how a "system of urban" agriculture works ? And how it can be modeled using systems dynamics, UML language or any other ontological method ?

Urban agriculture: Need shade loving plants, shallow rooted plants, structure on roof, etc

How can we measure the role of urban agriculture in urban resilience?

Dear Friends

Is there a simple method for evaluating ecoSystem servcices of Urban Tree and any research on linking Ecosystem Services to Urban Corridor Management?

Best Regards

Olivier

I am undertaking a research into urban agriculture as it affects livelihood in a metropolitan Mega city. I am interested in the changing pattern of urban agriculture over the years in the metropolitan city. I intend to use satellite images in carrying out the study. What Remote Sensing and GIS methods are appropriate for this type of study?

I've spent days looking for it but it seems like the actual study does not exist? What is this number based on?

Currently discussions are going on regarding how COVID-19 related public health intervention will affect people’s livelihood, especially in developing countries where poverty is widespread and people live hand to mouth. The discussion largely relate to the question, how can we sustain food supply in the face of the pandemic? In most cases agricultural production is done in rular areas, and there is a belief that public health interventions restricting movement i.e. lockdowns might affect food supply in urban areas. In a youth group I volunteer part time, it has been thought that urban agriculture where each household owns a compost backyard garden might not only be a solution to agricultural supply chains, but also providing onsite waste disposal option while limiting human movement thereby reducing possibility of further spread of COVID-19. But while that this might appear to be a double fold solution, a question also rise on how this can affect rural economy. Should we encourage urban communities to start producing their own food or we should not allow condition of poverty among members of rular communities to get worsened? Is urban agriculture a good practice to build resilient communities to pandemics like COVID-19?

As part of developing master plan, Urban agriculture landuse has to be introduced.

What are the criterias for the selection of suitable land from existing vacant land for community based urban farming?

I am looking at a specific namelist.input tailored for urban areas.

Thanks.

p.s. WRF version 4.0

The coastal sediments nearer to urban, agricultural, and industrial areas are subjected to organic and inorganic contamination. How this type of contamination can be assessed with an FTIR Spectra? Please send me some publications and methods to determine the FTIR Spectra of sediments.

My soil is contaminated with trace elements, organic compounds.It has a high concentration of CaCO3 with silty sandy as texture.

In order to adapt local environment,I am looking for examples that could grow in such conditions, especially towards the calcium carbonate.

The C/N is included between 10 to 23 and and It can reach 43 in one depth.

If You can advise me with references or articles.

Thank you for your help.

Desalination of salty groundwater and seawater could unlock the vast water resource and provide a sustainable source of water to water-stressed regions of the world. Desalination processes have been categorized into three main areas: i) thermal or phase change processes, ii) filtration-membrane processes and iii) intensified processes which involve integration of various processes (Gude et al., 2010). However, these methods are costly.

Objectives our project are as follows:

1: To introduce an economic and viable system to the desalinated ground-waters in order to support urban and agricultural prosperity and protecting the environment.

2: To set up the introduced system in the desired region.

I am so glad that anyone gives me useful advice and experience.

When an urbanfarming strategy is introduced to an open land it may affect the neighbouring activities, mainly residential.

What are the parameters to be studied to find out the impact?Mainly ecologically and psychologically?

Can this develop a new culture of farming in urban dwellers, and later they practise farming inside their house?

Hello, i'm very interested in the development of business model in urban agriculture, are you still working on the subject ? Best regards. Nicolas Ancion

the importance of urban agriculture is to achieve food security for the urban population as well as to improve the city's environment

The pattern of illumination is generally referred to as the duration of illumination or the periodicity of lighting. But it contains much more complicated combinations of illumination modes.

For example, instead of 12h on and 12h off in the 24h period, it can be set to 1h on and off, 1min on and off, 1s on and off, 1ms on and off, 1ns on and off, etc. alternatively for 24h and plant responses among different illumination modes can be compared. As a scientific research, such change of illumination modes may lead to some valuable findings.

Furthermore, for the color combination of red:blue 7:3, instead of using a mix of 70% red and 30% blue at the same time, one can illuminate plants using red light for 70% of the time and blue light for 30% of the time, or using red light for 70% of the intensity all the time and blue light for 30% of the time at full intensity, etc.

There could be many other possible combinations and this would cause some unexpected responses from plants and lead to some interesting findings.

I am interested if anyone could share any similar studies or references on the topic mentioned above, with experiments and results.

Thank you!

I am currently looking for a Journal that is used more by practitioners to publish work on Urban Agriculture and Agriculture Technology methods discoveries.

Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I am looking for a research gap to start my B.Sc. thesis on the topic of Vertical Farming, Controlled Environment Agriculture, Urban Agriculture. Any ideas/suggestions?

Thank YOU

New materials are revolutionizing sectors as diverse as construction and communications. Advanced manufacturing technologies have altered long-standing patterns of productivity and employment. Improved air and sea transportation has greatly accelerated the worldwide flow of people and goods.

All this has both created and mandated greater interdependence among firms and nations. The rapid rate of innovation and the dynamics of technology flows mean that comparative advantage is short-lived. To maximize returns, arrangements such as transnational mergers and shared production agreements are sought to bring together partners with complementary interests and strengths. This permits both developed and developing countries to harness technology more efficiently, with the expectation of creating higher standards of living for all involved. Our results indicate that global distribution diminishes the chance of completing tasks on time and degrades subsystem design quality. can architectural innovation destroys the usefulness of a firm's firm's architectural knowledge but preserves the usefulness of its knowledge about the product's components?

Ideally, the tool would capture the spectrum with cameras/sensors on a Raspberry Pi running Linux, and use the Intel Open CV with the Discrete Fourier Transform to analyze the data. I need to measure what frequencies of light are incident on the plant canopy in urban agriculture systems. The quantum flux meter (photo attached) works well, and is cost effective within the PAR bandwidth from 400 nm to 700 nm yet does not parse out the amplitude per individual wavelength nor extend into UV-B and far red bands from 285 nm to 760 nm.

I need to gather information about the practice of urban farming such as hydroponic farming and vertical farming in tropical countries that could be applied to the Philippines. Precisely, information about the type of vegetables and crops that could be cultivated and the significant systems and facilities needed to create an urban farm. Thank you.

Most land (38.6%) modified by humans for agriculture (pasture + croplands) is about 19.4 million square miles. Another 14.9% (about 7.7 million square miles) is land that is modified for other uses (logging, mines, planted forests, erosion, urban areas). If the urban areas constitute about the 3% of these 7.5 mill. square miles then 58.275 Ha is the land occupied by urban areas in the world. How could I estimate the number of hectares that are used in urban agriculture in the world? Would FAO have this information? Where?

Hey everyone, in my thesis one of my goals is to address the current knowledge on solitary bees (group of species). So i made a multiple choice survey covering the basic information about this subject. Which is the best way to analyze data ?

Questions example:

1. What are solitary bees?

A) Bees that do not form Beehive

B) Bees that have separate themselves from the Beehive

C) Bees responsible for collecting food

D) Non-fertile bees

Kind Regards,

Miguel

Food production out-puts from cities can be significant and since urbanization is on the rise worldwide I would like to learn more specifically what is/are the impact/s of growing food in cities.

Dear experts,

I am going to prepare a research proposal about planting design or about urban agriculture .

Do you have any suggestion or guidance for me?

Best regards,

I am supposed to analyse the Land use/Land cover of some particular area, taking into consideration the various  atmospheric  and land surface conditions- satellite image of which month is best suitable?

I am interested in evaluating the pollution of an industrial area in my city, making use of mosses. Which method is the most recommended?

what tools are efficient for measuring urban growth apart from  remote sensing techniques

I appreciate if anyone Can Suggest / Provide me with a resource that I can use to get a list of C3 & C4 plants in Egypt?

Urban Centers lately have been going green and have been trying to make parks a bigger part of their architecture and in line with that are trees that bring different organisms with them that can affect the overall biodiversity of a city.

Cause of Slums rapidly increases day by day.

Empects of Slums on urban areas.?

The pyrolysis of urban forest and green waste to produce biochar is based on system used in Stockholm, and the utilisation of biochar is key to how the project can be further intergrated into urban ecosystem allowing urban horticulture to beocme a component of improved urban ecosystem that is also community orientated where a cafe/food outlet derives 80% of produce form local growers...the biochar is used to reduce/prevent PAH, VOC & heavy metals entering food chain so the role of green walls, roofs and conversion of brownfield & deralic land to alotments becomes viable.

Is this sort of project feesable and has any one worked on the development of not for profit community horticultural projects of this nature.

Thank-you

Urban greening (the provision of additional trees and green open space within a city) is widely acknowledged to provide benefits, such as increased mental and physical health, reduction of heat island effect, increasing house prices and protecting biodiversity.

The water sector (water utilities and catchment authorities) are generally expected to provide water supply, sewerage and drainage services to urban areas. In some cities it is now popular to provide wetlands and biofilters sometimes referred to as "green infrastructure", "sustainable urban drainage systems", or "water sensitive urban design".

However aside from these stormwater management systems, what else should water utilities be doing to support urban greening and cooling? 

Do they have a role in coordination and implementation of tree planting? Should policies be put in place to increase irrigation during heat wave events? Do they have authority to influence new developments?

I am interested in everyone's thoughts and also any examples of water authorities becoming involved in greening and cooling, thank you.

Do you know if the effect of these designs were later analysed on the users of the spaces?

I would like to evaluate existing urban green areas (e.g. schoolyards, playgrounds, botanical gardens, etc) to see if and how they are contributing to the goals of environmental education. It would be useful to see designes that were already done in this spirit. Thank you!

I want to calculate the reduction in runoff and pollutants in urban areas by incorporating trees as one of Green Infrastructure practice.

Cellular automata are commonly used for predicting growth patterns of urban settlements and are therefore very useful for urban planning. Still how to apply the results to Cellular Automata predictions in urban design scale?

What is the role of green land in cities and rural areas? the role of botanical gardens and sanctuaries?

What is the role of forest extension officers and land restorators?

I'm interested in identifying the most relevant literature (academic or otherwise) on the topic of smart urban farms (indoor or vertical farms).

Of particular interest are papers that focus on (i) technologies and how its evolving (LEDs etc) (ii) business model (RoI etc) for scale up (iii) case studies ...

My greenhouse experiment will be concluding soon and I'll be ready to harvest my plant tissues to test for lead, cadmium, and arsenic. I've found a couple different papers giving a vague overview of how they prepared and tested their samples and one that has a pretty decent description of their method, but I wanted to see if any researchers here had a well established protocol (for the whole process from drying out the harvest tissue to digestion. Once it's digested and in the standard solution, the procedure for the ICP-MS should be the same as for anything else.)

Thank you so much! This is my first research project, so I really want to do it well.

I am just starting a research about building-related urban agriculture, and in particular farming practices taking place against/on/within the building envelope (rooftop and facades). Is there any literature about architectural and spatial integration of the farming rooms into building or, even better, about buildings' architectural requirements for a proper integration ?

Thank you in advance!

Dear All,

I have read about the two software programmes developed by the MIT: UMI and ARCHSIM. Have anyone ever used them?

I am looking for a simulation software to model urban agriculture integrated onto buildings'skin (rooftop farms, facade farms, greenhouses) and test its impact on urban microclimate (I work a t a district scale!). I would like to understand if one of these programmes suits the purpose...

Which opportunity do these programmes give me to detail building elements and cover building surfaces with vegetation and shading divices? Is it true that components can be freely modeled in Rhino and materials can be assigned (also vegetation)?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards

Dear All,

I would like to make use of the microclimate simulation software ENVI-MET, to test the influence that buildig-related Urban Agriculture operations(such as rooftop/ facade farms or rooftop/facade-based greenhouses) have on the urban microclimate, if they are adopted at an urban scale. I have never used the software before, but I know it works pretty well for modelling and simulating vegetation, and in particular green roofs and green facades. 

Albeit vertical greening has some similarity to rooftop or facade farms, I guess there would be some basical differences in modelling them, as well as in the outcomes. 

Do you know if the software has been ever used for such a purpose?  How do you suggest to model such systems? Can they be approximated somehow?

I have tried to contact the software's developers on info@envi-met.com but the emails are pushed always back...Do you know any othere contacts?

Any suggestions on where to find an ENVI-MET manual and tutorials?

Thank you in advance!

Anyone knows any references or projects about types of green and hybrid roofs in meditteranean countries (Portugal would be the best option)? Their applications, potentials for energy saving and other externalities, their costs, efficiency etc.?

Also which plants are best suited for green roofs in such meditteranean areas? How easily can such green roofs be managed, and what is their strong as well as weak aspects?

Thanks, Lea

Cities collecting and composting organic household waste for urban agriculture reduce the need for industrial fertilizer. Thus the use of compost cuts out the impacts from industrial fertilizers and the production of these fertilizers.

I would like to investigate how urban agriculture can contribute to stromwater management and organic waste management at a urban level, but focusing on building-related practices, such as (rooftop farms or facade farms). 

Are there relevant examples of cities that integrate building-related agriculture (rooftop farms/facade farms) into green-infrustructures planning? Could I use a casy study method to identify design strategies, implementation criteria and planning instruments? Or should I extend the research to urban land-based practices? 

Thank you in advance!

It might be consist of making car free street, cultural event, clearance the obstacle on sidewalk, building color control, building high control, taking electrical wire to the underground...)

Urban Agriculture (UA) can be implemented in various ways. For instance rooftop-based, land based, or in a closed controlled environment. Furthermore different cultivation methods are available (e.g. hydroponics, soilless- or soil-based agriculture). In addition, it can also be distinguished between community based concepts, private lots, or profit-orientated approaches, etc.

Aside from that UA can have a beneficial effect on urban infrastructures (storm water management, utilizing waste water and biomass, heat reduction, etc.).

My research focusses on the assessment of sustainable and resilient aspects of UA mainly from an ecological point of view. I would be grateful, if somebody could give me some recommendations how I can assess these values in order to provide a selection matrix as a tool for urban planners to incorporate UA in different urban structure types. Any recommendation is welcome ;)

I am researching methods or policies that could help to introduce urban agriculture (only produce) as a (legitimate) land-use within CBD or downtowns. refering specifically to American downtowns. It could be in the form of vertical garden- indoor or outdoor, roof top and might also include using hydropnics/aeroponic technology to grow produce.

Having said that, each downtown district (especially ones having residential apartments) would have a minimum of some percentage of agriculture zone allocated within its boundary and would be accessible to public.

I would like to explore options on similar lines for different city types.

These waters contains lot of pethogens bacteria's and other poisonous heavy metals too. Use of these waters in Peri urban areas for growing vegetables and other crops enhance the chances of entering these pethogens in human food chain. What is your experience in this field please share.

We are having a workshop in Auckland in 2 weeks to consider urban pressures on the horizon.  The challenge is to think of new ideas, or issues poorly studied, rather than the usual problems or exacerbators of the usual problems. Your ideas would be welcome.

Currently underutilized but valuable urban public space, is the nature strip/verge a viable option for food production?

What are the barriers? What are the benefits?

I'm particularly interested in heavy metals, and discussions and examples of how water quality monitoring during peak flows can capture information about 1) pollutants that are not present in peak flows, and /or found at lower concentrations in low flows and base flows, (and hence not measured during weekly / monthly grab samples); 2) measure peak flows with regard to seasonal effects, esp. spring and fall 'first flush' from road, urban and agricultural runoff. I have a number of papers on first flush, but am specifically looking for references about effective water quality sampling.

Thanks!!

Hi, I want to make one or more density maps (GIS) on urban agriculture in Rome, I have 4000 polygons differentiated by types (community garden, residential garden etc.) and uses (horticulture, vineyards, olive groves etc.). I thought firstly to kernel density to represent the area density, anyone have other ideas?

Regards

Giuseppe

In many developing countries, rapid urbanization and population growth generate lots of waste including biomass. How can we wisely use those biomass in urban agriculture? I am going to do a research to find a triple win solution among city dwellers, urban farmers, and urban ecosystem services. Any input of knowledge is highly appreciated.

I hope to use the imaging to assess the health of urban trees.

What are the basic features for an agricultural scheme to be called as Urban Agriculture?

I am planning to write my thesis on urban agriculture, and look at analyzing which type of urban agriculture technique is best suited to the city of Melbourne, a low density, sprawling city. Whether in this context, the use of vacant blocks of land and public gardens etc is a more viable method than building integrated agriculture, such as rooftop gardens and edible vertical gardens.

I am looking for best practices about how the neighborhood could be involved with (public) university campus facilities such as using the green areas as community garden or urban farming. I started a community garden in Politecnico di Milano campus two years ago as a result of a research project involving the design students and the community in a co-design process and then in co-managing and I am wondering if there are any other projects like this in other international universities.

I am working on a project to identify the best suited trees for sustainable urban green cover. Some of the criteria for tree selection are - tree height, good foliage spread, less leaf fall...etc.

My personal interest in this follows an increase in publicity and advocation of "sustainable urban gardening", i.e. using discarded materials such as old tires to create subsistence container gardens in traditionally impoverished high-population density areas or those recovering from natural disasters. While the ability to grow enough nourishing food to sustain life is certainly superior to malnourishment and starvation, I worry about the potential for chronic health risks resulting from increased oral exposure to whatever the decomposition products of tires may be (i.e. PAHs, butadiene, phthalates, metals?). And where food is more easy to obtain, I'm concerned that the potential health risks may begin to outweigh the marginal health benefits. Thoughts? Exposure is not my field of expertise, but I'm curious: has anyone looked for the presence of tire decomposition products in vegetables grown in/near tires? Thank you for your time!

Different prototype of community gardens can produce new shared territorials that could be public , semi-public or even private in each neighborhood.

Siltation of drains and lakes has become a problem. Both waste disposal and soil erosion are responsible for siltation. There are different methods for preventing soil erosion like vegetative methods.

Food supply is fundamental to city life. Urban farm can offer us another form of greenery site apart from some fresh vegetable we need daily. Meanwhile we can do excises by managing our mini farm like our flower garden. It's a promising project for our future urban life.

However, more technical problems and land densification strategy need to be considered.

How do you think the way to develop this idea?

On the basic of exist city center, what is the proper way to develop the architecture for urban farm?

Urban agriculture in this context refers to farming activities by urban households on small pieces of land allocated to them by urban municipalities temporarily for growing grain crops.