ABSTRACT
Urban agroecosystems including home gardens, community gardens, and market farms harbor high amounts of plant and animal diversity that maintain ecosystem functioning that underly many regulating, supporting and provisioning ecosystem services. Yet environmental change stemming from climate change will increasingly impact the ability of these urban agroecosystems to maintain crop production, and to support biodiversity that sustain ecosystem functions to provide services. Little research in urban agroecology explicitly investigates impacts of local weather patterns or regional climate cycles on plant and animal biodiversity, ecosystem functions, or service delivery. Consequently, there is little understanding of how social and ecological facets of urban agroecosystems are impacted by climate-related factors, and how they will be affected by climate change. This chapter bridges agricultural and urban literature to discuss how climate-related factors and climate change may affect the biodiversity of plants and animals in urban agroecosystems, and the ecosystem functions and services urban agroecosystems provide to urban human communities. I highlight where including climate-related factors in urban agroecology research may further our understanding of social-ecological processes underlying urban agroecosystems in the climate change era – essential to support climate resilient urban production systems for our future cities.
