Effect of Urbanization on Biodiversity: Ecological and Sociological Perspectives

Abstract

One of the most pressing issues facing not only the United States but the world is the accelerated loss of biodiversity. The leading cause of declining biodiversity, from an ecological point of view, is the destruction and fragmentation of habitats; urbanization is almost second to none in this regard. The literature is rich with studies showing the detrimental impacts of increasing levels of urbanization on biodiversity. The bulk of these studies are ecological spatial analyses, mainly focusing on avifauna. Sociological literature is not overly saturated with research relating to biodiversity loss, particularly on the sub national level of the United States, where such research is none existent. Considering this, we attempted to analyze the relationship between increasing urbanization and bird biodiversity via bivariate correlations and linear regression models. Here, we test different sociological/ecological theories, namely: Urban-Rural Dynamics (URD), IPAT, and Ecological Kuznets Curves (EKC). We mainly focused on URD but saw this as an opportunity to test other relevant theories for which we had sufficient data. Support was found for URD and partial support was found for the IPAT model however, our results for EKC were inconclusive. Research was limited by the data available, which was expected, as this is the first study of its kind to be done on the sub-national level of the United States.