Tracing the pathways from urbanization to ecosystem functioning in streams
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study investigates how urbanization influences stream ecosystem functioning across two North American river systems spanning a gradient of impervious surface cover (IC). We quantified water quality, macroinvertebrate community composition, trophic structure derived from stable isotopes, and leaf litter decomposition rates to assess how abiotic, biotic and functional attributes respond to increasing urban pressure. Urbanization directly reduced water quality and indirectly altered macroinvertebrate assemblages and trophic complexity. Despite declining macroinvertebrate diversity and reduced macrofaunal contributions to decomposition at high IC, overall decomposition rates increased along the urban gradient. This unexpected pattern suggests compensatory processes, potentially involving microbial pathways, and points to a shift in the dominant mechanisms sustaining decomposition. These results highlight how intertwined abiotic and biotic pathways mediate ecosystem responses to urbanization and underscore the importance of integrating microbial perspectives in future assessments of stream functioning. Full data are available.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".