Current and historical land use influence soil-based ecosystem services in an urban landscape

Urban landscapes are increasingly recognized as providing important ecosystem services (ES) to their occupants. Yet, urban ES assessments often ignore the complex spatial heterogeneity and land-use history of cities. Soil-based services may be particularly susceptible to land-use legacy effects. We studied indicators of three soil-based ES – carbon storage, water quality regulation, and runoff regulation – in a historically agricultural urban landscape and asked: (1) How do ES indicators vary with contemporary land cover and time since development? (2) Do ES indicators vary primarily among land-cover classes, within land-cover classes, or within sites? (3) What is the relative contribution of urban land-cover classes to potential citywide ES provision? We measured biophysical indicators (soil carbon (C), available phosphorus (P), and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks)) in 100 sites across 5 land-cover classes, spanning an ~125 year gradient of time since development within each land-...