Sydney harbour looking at the city with a ferry on the water and lots of highrise building on the skyline.
Sydney Harbour is a complex urban ecosystem.

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms, in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and soil), interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.

Defining urban

Urban ecosystems comprise the built cities, towns, and urban corridors constructed by humans. Urban areas can be viewed as ecosystems in that they have many of the same functions of natural ecosystem, that is, living and non-living components interacting as a system. In considering urban ecosystems, we should try to put aside the notion that nature means only pristine natural areas. There is also nature in cities, it just tends to be a little less obvious.

Sydney Harbour

Sydney Harbour for example, in the centre of a global city, is one of the most biodiverse marine regions on the planet. It contains at least 3,600 invertebrates and about 600 fish species, including dozens of Australian endemic species. Cities themselves also act like ecosystems in that they have inputs (energy, materials and nutrient supplies), processes and outputs (waste products)

Observatory Hill Environmental Education Centre

Did you know that NSW has an urban focused DOE Environmental Education Centre in the heart of Sydney? Observatory Hill Environmental Education Centre is located in Millers Point adjacent to the Rocks, Barangaroo and the CBD. It conducts urban based environmental education programs for students from K-12. The Centre focuses on NSW Syllabus outcomes, based around key issues related to urban environments and urban ecosystems.