Urban community gardens are vital green spaces threatened by global social and environmental change factors. Population growth has reduced the amount of space available in cities, and climate change challenges plant growth thresholds. Urban community gardens provide dynamic socio-ecological systems to study how such social and environmental change factors affect the management and delivery of ecosystem services. They provide spaces where urban citizens purposefully interact with nature and receive multiple benefits. In this paper, we synthesize the results of three years of research in a case study of urban community gardens across the Central Coast of California and present a framework showing how both social and environmental change factors at the regional scale affect the ecological make-up of urban community gardens, which in turn affect the ecosystem services coming from such systems. Our study reveals that global environmental change felt at the regional level (e.g., increased built environment, climate change) interact with social change and policy (e.g., population growth, urbanization, water use policy), thus affecting regulations over garden resources (e.g., water availability) and management decisions by gardeners (e.g., soil management, crop planting decisions). These management decisions at the plot-scale, determine the ecological complexity and quality of the gardens and affect the resulting ecosystem services that come from these systems, such as food provision for both humans and urban animals. A greater understanding of how environmental and social change factors drive the management processes of urban community gardens is necessary to design policy support systems that encourage the continued use and benefits arising from such green spaces. Policies that can support urban community gardens to maintain ecological complexity and increase biodiversity through active management of soil quality and plant diversity have the potential to increase social and environmental outcomes that feedback to the larger environmental and social system.

城市社区花园是至关重要的绿色空间，受到全球社会和环境变化因素的威胁。人口增长减少了城市的可用空间，气候变化挑战了植物的增长门槛。城市社区花园提供了动态的社会生态系统，以研究这种社会和环境变化因素如何影响生态系统服务的管理和提供。它们提供了城市居民有目的地与自然互动并获得多重收益的空间。在本文中，我们以加利福尼亚州中部海岸的城市社区花园为例，综合了三年研究的结果，并提出了一个框架，展示了区域范围内的社会和环境变化因素如何影响加利福尼亚州的生态构成。城市社区花园 反过来又会影响来自此类系统的生态系统服务。我们的研究表明，在区域层面感受到的全球环境变化（例如，建筑环境的增加，气候变化）与社会变化和政策（例如，人口增长，城市化，用水政策）相互作用，从而影响了对园林资源的监管（例如，水的可用性）和园丁的管理决定（例如，土壤管理，农作物种植决定）。这些在地块规模上的管理决定，决定了花园的生态复杂性和质量，并影响了由这些系统产生的生态系统服务，例如为人类和城市动物提供食物。必须进一步了解环境和社会变化因素如何驱动城市社区花园的管理流程，以设计鼓励持续利用此类绿色空间并从中受益的政策支持系统。通过积极管理土壤质量和植物多样性，可以支持城市社区花园维持生态复杂性和增加生物多样性的政策，有可能增加社会和环境成果，从而反馈给更大的环境和社会系统。