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We ask how environmental justice and urban ecology have influenced one another over the past 25 years in the context of the US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) project. BES began after environmental justice emerged through activism and scholarship in the 1980s but spans a period of increasing awareness among ecologists and environmental practitioners. The work in Baltimore provides a detailed example of how ecological research has been affected by a growing understanding of environmental justice. The shift shows how unjust environmental outcomes emerge and are reinforced over time by systemic discrimination and exclusion. We do not comprehensively review the literature on environmental justice in urban ecology but do present four brief cases from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, to illustrate the global relevance of the topic. The example cases demonstrate the necessity for continuous engagement with communities in addressing environmental problem solving.

 

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry (the Institute) celebrates its 75th Anniversary with the publication of this Special Issue of Forests. This Issue is based on presentations delivered in a symposium held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2014. It augments a quarter century of scientific knowledge and capitalizes on a unique set of synergies chartered by a strategy based on shared stewardship, innovative transdisciplinary collaborations, and breakthroughs in science and technology. The manuscripts contained here present advancements in our approach to the development of policies for effective governance and stewardship, long-term focus for the understanding of ecosystem processes and functions, novelties given attention to cross-boundary collaborative approaches to science, and proposed alternative institutional visions in the Anthropocene. As the Institute continues to collaboratively explore new frontiers in science, we recognize advances in forestry, atmospheric sciences, modeling, hydrology, plant physiology, and microbial ecology as core to the understanding of tropical forests in the Anthropocene.