Lundquist Urban Ecology Lab
Cities are growing around the world, changing the places where people and other species live. We study what those changes mean for biodiversity in urban parks, rivers, and green spaces.
About the lab
We study urban biodiversity in the field and use GIS, remote sensing, and spatial analysis to make sense of what we find. We favor open data and open-source tools so the work is easier to check, reuse, and extend.
Collaborative research
Students help shape each project from the start: they refine questions, design methods, collect observations, and work through what the results mean.
Current work
Current projects span urban rivers, insects in small green spaces, connections among pollinator habitats, and the teaching of data-driven science.
How does urbanization alter biodiversity, food webs, habitat connectivity, and ecosystem function?
Field surveys, GIS, remote sensing, graph analysis, computer vision, and open-source research tools.
Papers, open-source mapping tools, public data projects, and teaching materials.
Aquatic ecology
Urban development can alter both sides of a river food web. In the Bronx River, blacknose dace, alewife, and American eel feed on aquatic macroinvertebrates. By surveying those invertebrates and examining fish gut contents, we can track how the food web differs across an urban watershed.
Hernandez JE, Lundquist MJ (2025). Limited Diets of Eastern Blacknose Dace Within the Highly Urbanized Bronx River, New York, USA. Urban Naturalist Notes (12) N1–N7.
Photo: Dmitri Zotov / Unsplash
Urban biodiversity
We use GIS and pathfinding methods—something like Google Maps for insects—to estimate how pollinators might move between green spaces while navigating building-lined streets. We call these routes “bug roads.” They help us identify green spaces that may be especially important for connectivity and places where pollinator habitat could make the greatest difference.
Lundquist MJ, Lovejoy PC, Fay BG, Hernandez JE, Madrid M (2025). Bug Roads: Modeling Green Space Connectivity and Pollinator Habitat in a Large City Using Open GIS Data and Tools. Ecological Applications, 35(7), e70128.
Green infrastructure
Large parks receive much of the attention in urban ecology, but smaller patches of green are everywhere. We study insects in New York City tree pits and other small green spaces to learn which species use them and how these easily overlooked habitats contribute to urban biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Lundquist MJ, Weisend MR, Kenmore HH (2022). Insect biodiversity in urban tree pit habitats. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 78, 127788.
Photo: Christopher Gower / Unsplash
Science education
We develop practical ways to teach data analysis, programming, and AI in classroom, hybrid, and remote science courses.
Lundquist MJ and Aguanno A (2024). Here and there: a novel hybrid remote/in-person college-level science lab model at a small, primarily undergraduate institution. Journal of College Science Teaching (53) 205–210.
Across the lab
LiDAR separates vegetation into low, medium, and high layers that become movement-cost surfaces. For New York City, the analysis follows more than 74,000 routes between pairs of parks and measures cover, gaps, and possible stepping stones along each one.
Genomic methods and 16S rRNA sequencing let us examine the leafcutter bee Megachile texana together with its associated microbial communities. We are looking for changes along urban–rural gradients and asking how they relate to pollinator biology and local environmental conditions.
Vegetated roofs and tree canopies often look alike from above. We distinguish them using NAIP multispectral imagery, LiDAR canopy measurements, NDVI, image texture, and building geometry.
Do well-vegetated routes between parks correspond to richer pollinator communities? We compare corridor metrics with GBIF records while accounting for park area, isolation, and habitat quality.
Transects from Manhattan park interiors into nearby streets record air temperature, humidity, and thermal comfort. We then compare the reach of each park's cooling effect with its canopy cover, size, surrounding urban form, and nearby building height.
Physical traits do not always settle a pollinator's identity. DNA barcodes provide a second line of evidence: we clean each Sanger sequence and compare it with reference databases before assigning a name.
Research practice
Field observations, maps, code, and molecular data often meet in the same project. Students learn these methods by applying them to questions the lab is actively investigating.
Graph and least-cost path models help us ask how buildings, streets, parks, and vegetation shape movement through cities. Depending on the scale of the analysis, the workflow may include QGIS, GeoPandas, Shapely, rasterio, igraph, spatial indexing, and PostGIS.
LiDAR point clouds are classified into vegetation-height strata and combined with NAIP and satellite imagery. These data support vegetation-corridor models, park-cooling studies, canopy assessment, and computer-vision detection of green roofs.
Our molecular work includes 16S rRNA analysis of bee gut microbiomes, genomic analysis of Megachile texana, and DNA barcoding of urban pollinators. Sequence-based identification complements field surveys and morphology-based taxonomy.
Analyses in R and Python cover diversity, community composition, spatial patterns, regression, null models, and networks. For larger projects, Docker, Git, shared data, and documented scripts keep the work organized and reproducible.
Field methods include aquatic macroinvertebrate surveys, fish gut-content analysis, pollinator sampling, riparian habitat assessment, and insect identification. New park transects connect temperature, humidity, thermal comfort, canopy cover, and surrounding urban form.
Courses in ecology, conservation biology, biostatistics, and urban ecosystems use real data from research. GriffyStats and our interactive web applications make statistical lessons and New York City environmental data available beyond the classroom.
Selected publications
Croman J.R. et al. (including Lundquist, M.J.). Limno-STOICH: a comprehensive database linking the elemental stoichiometry of organisms with inland aquatic habitats. Limnology and Oceanography Letters, e70105.
Lundquist, M.J., Lovejoy, P.C., Fay, B.G., Hernandez, J.E., Madrid, M. Bug Roads: Modeling Green Space Connectivity and Pollinator Habitat in a Large City Using Open GIS Data and Tools. Ecological Applications, 35(7), e70128.
Shen, M. et al. (including Lundquist, M.J.). FreshLanDiv: A global database of freshwater biodiversity across different land uses. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 33, e13917.
Lundquist, M.J., Scott, E.A. Patterns of aquatic insect biodiversity in the highly urbanized Bronx River, NY. Northeastern Naturalist, 30(2), 122–134.
The lab
Principal Investigator
Associate Teaching Professor
Chair, Urban Ecosystem Ecology Section, Ecological Society of America
I study how the structure of cities affects habitat connectivity, freshwater communities, pollinators, and green infrastructure. That work draws on field surveys as well as GIS, remote sensing, spatial models, and genomic analysis.
Student collaborators
Bug Roads pollinator dispersal modeling
Bronx River trophic ecology and blacknose dace diets
Mitochondrial DNA identification of native pollinators
Physiology of aquatic insects in the Bronx River
Effects of urbanization on mayflies in the Bronx River
Green roof assessment and aquatic insect diversity in the Bronx River
GIS analysis of tourism and green-space distribution in New York City
Insect biodiversity in urban tree-pit habitats
Water scarcity and insect diversity in tree-pit habitats
Contact