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Addressing the challenges of sustainable and equitable city management in the 21st century requires innovative solutions and integration from a range of dedicated actors. In order to form and fortify partnerships of multi-sectoral collaboration, expand effective governance, and build collective resiliency it is important to understand the network of existing stewardship organizations. The term ‘stewardship’ encompasses a spectrum of local agents dedicated to the evolving process of community care and restoration. Groups involved in stewardship across Baltimore are catalysts of change through a variety of conservation, management, monitoring, transformation, education, and advocacy activities for the local environment – many with common goals of joint resource management, distributive justice, and community power sharing. The “environment” here is intentionally broadly defined as land, air, water, energy and more. The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a method of data collection and visualization that tracks the characteristics of organizations and their financial and informational flows across sectors and geographic boundaries. The survey includes questions about three facets of environmental stewardship groups: 1) organizational characteristics, 2) collaboration networks, and 3) stewardship “turfs” where each organization works. The data have been analyzed alongside landcover and demographic data and used in multi-city studies incorporating similar datasets across major urban areas of the U.S. Additional information about the growing network of cities conducting stewmap can be found here: https://www.nrs.fs.usda.gov/STEW-MAP/ Romolini, Michele; Grove, J. Morgan; Locke, Dexter H. 2013. Assessing and comparing relationships between urban environmental stewardship networks and land cover in Baltimore and Seattle. Landscape and Urban Planning. 120: 190-207. https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/44985 Johnson, M., D. H. Locke, E. Svendsen, L. Campbell, L. M. Westphal, M. Romolini, and J. Grove. 2019. Context matters: influence of organizational, environmental, and social factors on civic environmental stewardship group intensity. Ecology and Society 24(4): 1. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10924-240401 Ponte, S. 2023. Social-ecological processes and dynamics of urban forests as green stormwater infrastructure in Maryland, USA. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. 

Abstract The Earth's population will become more than 80% urban during this century. This threshold is often regarded as sufficient justification for pursuing urban ecology. However, pursuit has primarily focused on building empirical richness, and urban ecology theory is rarely discussed. The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) has been grounded in theory since its inception and its two decades of data collection have stimulated progress toward comprehensive urban theory. Emerging urban ecology theory integrates biology, physical sciences, social sciences, and urban design, probes interdisciplinary frontiers while being founded on textbook disciplinary theories, and accommodates surprising empirical results. Theoretical growth in urban ecology has relied on refined frameworks, increased disciplinary scope, and longevity of interdisciplinary interactions. We describe the theories used by BES initially, and trace ongoing theoretical development that increasingly reflects the hybrid biological–physical–social nature of the Baltimore ecosystem. The specific mix of theories used in Baltimore likely will require modification when applied to other urban areas, but the developmental process, and the key results, will continue to benefit other urban social–ecological research projects.