About

The Qiu Lab at the University of Florida conducts basic and applied research that lies at the intersection of Landscape ecology, Ecosystem services, Global environmental change, Sustainability science, and Social-ecological systems. Our overarching research goal is to understand and predict how global environmental changes alter ecosystems and biodiversity at regional to global scales, and their consequences for ecosystem services (benefits people obtain from nature such as food, freshwater, recreation, flood mitigation, and stable climate) that underpin human well-being. We are particularly interested in understanding effects of multiple drivers of global change and their interactions. Our research is primarily focused on human-dominated landscapes where human closely interacts with nature, and has taken place in agroecosystems and urban ecosystems. Our ultimate goal is to generate actionable knowledge and develop solutions for real-world conservation, management, and policy challenge

Research topics

• Environmental resource management
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Geography
• Environmental planning
• Biology
• Environmental economics
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Business
• Economics
• Engineering
• Mathematics
• Civil engineering

Selected publications

• Unequal access to cultural ecosystem services across urban greenspaces

  Landscape and Urban Planning · 2026-03-18 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Identifying hotspots of soil legacy phosphorus for soil P remediation on a cattle ranch in the Headwaters of the Everglades, South Central Florida, USA, 2020.

  Environmental Data Initiative · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen access

  Phosphorus (P) cycling has been altered by human activities across various scales. 'Soil legacy P,' driven by agricultural changes such as excessive P fertilization and manure input, has led to P accumulation in soils. These legacy P reserves are long-term non-point sources, causing downstream eutrophication. Despite considerable scientific and policy interest, the fine-scale spatial heterogeneity, underlying drivers, and scales of variance of legacy P remain poorly understood. This dataset comprises of 1,438 surface soils sampled in 2020 across two typical subtropical grasslands managed for livestock production in South Central Florida, USA. The types of grasslands sampled were Intensively-managed or Improved pastures (IM), and Semi-native (SN) pastures. Chemical analysis was performed on the soil samples to determine three soil legacy P measurements (total P, Mehlich-1 and Mehlich-3 extractable P representing labile P pools) across the landscape. Other variables analyzed includedsoil organic matter, pH, available Fe and Al. Additionally, aboveground biomass samples were collected at a subset of soil sites, and analyzed for P content. The key questions regarding soil legacy P related to: its spatial variability and hotspots, variance distribution, relationship to land management and soil characteristics, and correlation with aboveground plant tissue P concentration. Subsequent analysis and spatial autoregressive modeling from this dataset revealed extreme variability of soil P at small scales, with diminishing variance as spatial scale increased, and increased variance in IM vs SN pastures. These findings enhance our understanding of the underlying drivers, spatial patterns, and variances of soil legacy P. Research suggests that broad pasture- or farm-level best management practices may be limited and less efficient, particularly for high-intensity pastures. Instead, management strategies to reduce soil legacy P could be implemented at fine scales, targeting P hotspots across the landscape. This approach could lead to more effective mitigation of downstream eutrophication and ecosystem services degradation caused by legacy P reserves.

  PublisherDOI

• Managing the food‒energy‒water nexus towards promoting holistic progress of the Sustainable Development Goals in China

  Geography and sustainability · 2026-04-01

  articleOpen access

  • A nexus framework mitigates SDG trade-offs and enhances synergies. • FEW nexus impacted SDGs via resource flows and economic-environmental efficiency. • Core FEW network regions gained SDG benefits; peripheries faced efficiency losses. • Optimizing nexus effects of energy-water flows can serve as SDG leverage points. • Nexus-based governance enables coordinated regional policies for SDG progress. Food, energy, and water (FEW), as essential resources for societal well-being, constitute a critical intervention domain for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through interregional resource flows and associated nexus effects, the FEW nexus redistributes economic benefits and environmental pressures across regions while interacting with broader development domains. However, how these processes influence trade-offs and synergies among SDGs across regions, and how coordinated FEW nexus management can be leveraged to promote holistic SDG progress, remain insufficiently understood. Focusing on China, this study revealed the spatial pattern shaped by FEW flows and the associated economic benefits and environmental efficiencies, quantified the significant but heterogeneous progress towards the SDGs, and systematically identified the impact of the FEW nexus on SDG progress. The results showed that food and energy flows generally enhanced SDG synergies both locally and through spillover effects, whereas current water flow patterns exhibited more significant negative impacts on multiple SDGs. Cross-regional synergies, efficiency inequalities and environmental pressure transfers, and multi-resource nexus effects collectively constituted the core mechanisms through which the FEW nexus affected SDG progress. The nexus effects of energy and water flows could serve as leverage points for mitigating temporal and spatial trade-offs among the SDGs. Finally, an integrative framework was proposed to systematically identify synergies and trade-offs across goals, regions, and scales, thereby supporting cross-sectoral and cross-regional coordinated governance strategies that avoid siloed optimization and accelerate holistic progress towards the SDGs.

  PublisherDOI

• Land-use intensity overrides grazing and precipitation effects on soil microbial communities in a subtropical agroecosystem

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-05-05

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Global change drivers are reshaping agroecosystems and their sustained functions worldwide. While soil microorganisms underpin the resilience of these systems, the individual and interactive effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on microbial community structure and function using large-scale field experiments remain poorly understood. Here, we utilize a full-factorial field experiment in a subtropical agroecosystem to investigate how land-use intensity, cattle grazing intensity, and altered precipitation regimes interact to shape soil microbiomes. Combining microbiome sequencing with network analyses and functional bioinformatics, we evaluated effects of these drivers on prokaryotic and fungal diversity, composition, predicted functional profiles, and community structure. Land-use intensity emerged as the primary driver of microbial responses, explaining 25% and 13% of the total variation in community composition for prokaryotes and fungi, respectively. Compared to intensively managed pastures, semi-natural pastures had significantly different community composition for prokaryotes and fungi and exhibited 22% higher fungal diversity. Semi-natural pastures were enriched with decomposer-associated taxa and metabolic pathways related to energy and lipid metabolism indicating enhanced microbial activity. Surprisingly, intensively managed pastures showed higher network modularity but lower network richness, suggesting a trade-off between community compartmentalization and complexity under intensive land management. Grazing and precipitation manipulations induced core microbiome changes within land-use intensities but had no impact on overall community structure and no significant interactions with land-use. Together, these findings suggest that long-term land-use legacies exert a persistent influence on soil microbial community structure, function, and organization, shaping the context within which other global change drivers operate in subtropical agroecosystems.

  PublisherDOI

• Periurban agrifood systems as high-priority sustainability challenges

  Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 2026-02-10

  articleOpen access

  New and distinct perspectives are urgently needed to understand periurban agrifood systems as high priority sustainability challenges. The rationale for our Perspective is rooted in viewing these sustainability challenges as powerfully shaped through the widespread global expansion and accelerating uneven development of periurban areas. Our Perspective uses this distinct focus on periurban agrifood systems to address a select group of current sustainability challenges and dynamics: (1) dynamics of multifunctional trends in changing periurban agrifood systems; (2) health and well-being including food and nutrition; (3) climate change, land use, and land systems that include a gamut of types encompassing agriculture, gardening, and other food-related functions; (4) agroecosystem and agroecological processes including diverse food (i.e., agrobiodiversity, soil, water) and (5) landscape dynamics and connectivity. Scope of the sustainability analysis is guided by our in-of-for framework of ideas emphasizing the multifunctionality of periurban agrifood systems, spatial dimensions, and research-policy-stakeholder connections. Further distinctness is evidenced in our Perspective’s framing in relation to global periurban expansion and accelerating uneven development. Our Perspective elucidates key insights of research on the current challenges of periurban agrifood sustainability. By developing, applying, and reflecting on its well-defined, coherent position centered on these elements, the distinct viewpoint of our Perspective provides important advances and insights toward the understanding of periurban agrifood systems and sustainability challenges.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A meta-analysis to disentangle the effects of land management on soil denitrification

  Environmental Nexus · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Land management in grasslands and agricultural systems influences soil denitrification, the microbial conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gases, which is a critical ecosystem function that underpins multiple ecosystem services. Agricultural practices, including grazing, fertilization, tillage, and overall land management intensity, can alter soil denitrification activities, yet few studies have systematically synthesized how management type and intensity affect denitrification across a range of managed grasslands and agricultural systems. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis of 160 studies to investigate and analyze how agricultural land management drives soil denitrification rates. Studies were categorized by land management type and intensity to assess their individual and interactive effects. Our results showed that fertilization significantly altered soil denitrification. Specifically, aggregating across selected studies, fertilizer application increased soil denitrification rates, while grazing, tillage, and species conversion overall showed no significant effects. Management intensity further modulated these responses, with higher fertilizer application rates leading to proportionally greater denitrification rates. Moreover, our analyses showed no consistent relationships between denitrification rates and edaphic and climatic variables, such as soil nitrate, moisture, or mean annual temperature and precipitation. Our findings demonstrate that agricultural management intensification can increase soil denitrification rates, with the magnitude of effect varying by management type. Our synthesis contributes to an improved understanding of how agricultural land use affects nitrogen cycling and underpins ecosystem services in agroecosystems.

  PublisherDOI

• Spatial patterns and interactions among multiple cultural ecosystem services across urban greenspaces

  Ecosystem Services · 2025-05-16 · 8 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Aboveground biomass density maps for post-hurricane Ian forest monitoring in Florida

  Scientific Data · 2025-07-10 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Hurricane Ian caused aboveground biomass density (AGBD) losses across Florida’s forests in the United States, highlighting the need for accurate, large-scale monitoring tools. We combined Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) LiDAR data with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and passive optical satellite imagery to model GEDI AGBD as a function of image-derived data, enabling predictions across the study area and producing continuous AGBD maps. Validation using in situ field data demonstrated high model performance, with an R2 of 0.93 and a root mean square difference (RMSD) of 39.3%. Spatial uncertainty reflecting bootstrap-derived variance remained consistent, with relative standard errors around 90% across the years analyzed. The data are accessible through a web application, RapidFEM4D, enabling researchers and stakeholders to assess AGBD maps for areas of interest. These datasets support monitoring forest recovery, assessing carbon dynamics, and guiding post-hurricane management and restoration. The RapidFEM4D platform facilitates access and analysis of Hurricane Ian’s impact on Florida’s forests, empowering stakeholders with actionable insights and offering a model for similar efforts in other hurricane-prone regions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rhizosphere Fusarium and other siderophore-producing fungi predict foliar phosphorus beyond soil chemistry in Bahiagrass

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Urban greenspaces benefit both human utility and biodiversity

  Urban forestry & urban greening · 2025-03-23 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Urban greenspaces are essential for both human well-being and biodiversity, with their importance continually growing in the face of increasing urbanization. The dual role of these spaces raises questions about how their planning and management can best serve the diverse needs of both people and biodiversity. Our goal was to quantify the synergies and tradeoffs between human utility and biodiversity benefits in urban greenspaces. Through a detailed inventory, we mapped 639 urban greenspaces throughout Broward County, Florida — one of the most populous counties in the United States. We identified and categorized various physical attributes (N = 8 in total), including playgrounds, athletic facilities, and picnic areas and derived a ‘human utility index’. Concurrently, we assessed biodiversity by estimating relative species richness within an urban greenspace. We found little relationship between our human utility index and biodiversity. More specifically, when the index was broken down to its parts, we found a positive correlation between some attributes such as playgrounds, bodies of water, nature preserves, and dog parks with biodiversity, indicating potential synergies rather than tradeoffs. This alignment between our human utility index and biodiversity suggests that urban parks can effectively serve multiple values without necessarily sacrificing one for the other. Both the human utility index and biodiversity correlate with greenspace size, emphasizing the significance of larger greenspaces in accommodating diverse values. Our results offer insights for optimizing planning and management of urban greenspaces to simultaneously benefit local communities and ecosystems, highlighting the potential for harmonizing human and biodiversity to foster sustainable cities.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Samuel C. Zipper

  United States Geological Survey

  52 shared

• Yuxi Guo

  27 shared

• Melissa Motew

  Indigo Information Services (United States)

  25 shared

• Eric G. Booth

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  25 shared

• Christopher J. Kucharik

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  24 shared

• Monica G. Turner

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  23 shared

• Yu Tao

  Nanjing Agricultural University

  22 shared

• Steven P. Loheide

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  19 shared

Labs

• Landscape Ecology and Sustainability Science LabPI

  Landscape Ecology and Sustainability Science