Nature at your service: summing it up.

Urban foresters, planners, researchers, educators, GIS practitioners, and citizen activists gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, in November for AMERICAN FORESTS' 2005 National Conference On Urban Ecosystems.

The long-standing urban forest conference made an important transition to the National Conference on Urban Ecosystems. More than just a title change, it was a significant change in thinking that recognizes the ecological services that trees provide and the importance of using natural systems to support urban areas. As we witness our communities turning from green to gray, it suggests that our community leaders need a better understanding of how closely the quality of a community is tied to the health of its urban ecosystem.

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This year's program theme, Nature at Your Service, aptly demonstrated how our urban ecosystems can reconnect people to their urban natural resources. From local to regional perspectives, the conference speakers offered the latest technologies, emerging public policies, citizen action, and tools to help put the urban forest ecosystem to best use.

The spotlight was on the Carolina Piedmont Region, which includes metropolitan areas like Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, and surrounding smaller communities. All of these, regardless of size, are grappling with an expanding population, decreasing forest canopy, and associated environmental problems. With an eye to those issues, conference sessions addressed how communities can plan for growth while maintaining environmental quality.

Timely sessions discussed how communities can rebuild with nature after catastrophic events like the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast communities. A special concurrent session presented Hurricanes, Urban Forests, and Coastal Communities, with representatives from the federal and state agencies and private forest consultants.

Keynote speakers tackled that question from seemingly diverse perspectives: Paul Hearn of the U.S. Geological Survey showed how the value of nature is available to everyone via the National Map on the web. Michael Gallis, an architect, city planner, and successful consultant, described the need to put natural systems on equal footing with built infrastructure. His regional-scale approach provides the conceptual framework for integrating development into the environment. Of course, reconnecting people with nature requires public support, and many people work on environmental issues outside of the environmental community. The Reverend Fletcher Harper of GreenFaith delivered a luncheon keynote on the growing awareness of the bonds between faith communities and the environmental movement.

This year, 127 minority and underserved people attended on scholarship; several presentations explored nontraditional greening programs (see Earthkeepers), social justice, environmental education with GIS, and citizen action that goes beyond tree planting into public policy efforts.

Just as an ecosystem itself is complex and dynamic, each of the perspectives presented at the conference seemed to converge to provide a catalyst for connecting urban growth and natural systems. The result, we hope, will be better communities in the future, ones that embrace "Nature at Your Service."