scholarly journals Crossing together towards implementing landscape connectivity : best practices along the Meadoway

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander James Furneaux
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Landscape Connectivity ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Wildlife Habitat ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Greater Toronto Area

ABSTRACT Urban development represents a fundamental threat to the viability of the functional ecological networks from which humans derive ecosystem services. As urbanized areas continue to grow and intensify, they fragment landscapes removing the connective green tissue capable of supporting a healthy and biodiverse ecosystem. Yet in many cities across North America and beyond, linear adaptive re-use parkland projects are transforming the landscapes of cities by reintroducing functional green spaces through the conversion of abandoned or underutilized utility corridors into greenways for the restoration of habitat, recreation, public transit, and art. In Toronto, the recently announced development of the Meadoway in Scarborough represents one of such opportunities to [re]connect human and wildlife habitat to and within each other along its 16-kilometre length. Planning for a new linear adaptive re-use parkland represents a ‘wicked problem’ with no clear solution, only better or worse responses learned through the continued re-evaluation of these responses and by grounding them in their place-specific conditions. This project integrates lessons learned from case examples of linear adaptive re-use parkland projects from across North America to consider the impacts these new amenities have generated on surrounding land uses and the communities that inhabit them. Applying these key lessons to the policy and physical landscape of the Meadoway provides an opportunity to unpack the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated the redevelopment of this landscape, articulated through three study areas. Using a mixed-methodological approach of case study and policy analysis paired with site observation, this study provides recommendations to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, the Weston Foundation, and the City of Toronto, all key development stakeholders of the Meadoway, to inform the implementation of the project’s goals and highlight key areas that should be considered given precedents from similar projects. Overarching recommendations highlight the need to consider: the various physical, temporal, and social understandings of connectivity; the land use changes associated with the introduction of a new greenspace amenity; and the imperative to meaningfully consult and collaborate with communities along the Meadoway to understand how this space can support their growth and vitality. Ultimately, learning from these key areas may provide useful context to future development of other hydro corridors in the Greater Toronto Area. Keywords: Landscape connectivity, Green infrastructure, Adaptive re-use, Parkland

scholarly journals Crossing together towards implementing landscape connectivity : best practices along the Meadoway

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander James Furneaux
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Landscape Connectivity ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Wildlife Habitat ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Greater Toronto Area

ABSTRACT Urban development represents a fundamental threat to the viability of the functional ecological networks from which humans derive ecosystem services. As urbanized areas continue to grow and intensify, they fragment landscapes removing the connective green tissue capable of supporting a healthy and biodiverse ecosystem. Yet in many cities across North America and beyond, linear adaptive re-use parkland projects are transforming the landscapes of cities by reintroducing functional green spaces through the conversion of abandoned or underutilized utility corridors into greenways for the restoration of habitat, recreation, public transit, and art. In Toronto, the recently announced development of the Meadoway in Scarborough represents one of such opportunities to [re]connect human and wildlife habitat to and within each other along its 16-kilometre length. Planning for a new linear adaptive re-use parkland represents a ‘wicked problem’ with no clear solution, only better or worse responses learned through the continued re-evaluation of these responses and by grounding them in their place-specific conditions. This project integrates lessons learned from case examples of linear adaptive re-use parkland projects from across North America to consider the impacts these new amenities have generated on surrounding land uses and the communities that inhabit them. Applying these key lessons to the policy and physical landscape of the Meadoway provides an opportunity to unpack the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated the redevelopment of this landscape, articulated through three study areas. Using a mixed-methodological approach of case study and policy analysis paired with site observation, this study provides recommendations to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, the Weston Foundation, and the City of Toronto, all key development stakeholders of the Meadoway, to inform the implementation of the project’s goals and highlight key areas that should be considered given precedents from similar projects. Overarching recommendations highlight the need to consider: the various physical, temporal, and social understandings of connectivity; the land use changes associated with the introduction of a new greenspace amenity; and the imperative to meaningfully consult and collaborate with communities along the Meadoway to understand how this space can support their growth and vitality. Ultimately, learning from these key areas may provide useful context to future development of other hydro corridors in the Greater Toronto Area. Keywords: Landscape connectivity, Green infrastructure, Adaptive re-use, Parkland

Urban Greening and Human-Wildlife Relations in Philadelphia: From Animal Control to Multispecies Coexistence?

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hunold
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Runoff ◽  
Urban Wildlife ◽  
Wildlife Habitat ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Urban Greening ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Animal Control

City-scale urban greening is expanding wildlife habitat in previously less hospitable urban areas. Does this transformation also prompt a reckoning with the longstanding idea that cities are places intended to satisfy primarily human needs? I pose this question in the context of one of North America's most ambitious green infrastructure programmes to manage urban runoff: Philadelphia's Green City, Clean Waters. Given that the city's green infrastructure plans have little to say about wildlife, I investigate how wild animals fit into urban greening professionals' conceptions of the urban. I argue that practitioners relate to urban wildlife via three distinctive frames: 1) animal control, 2) public health and 3) biodiversity, and explore the implications of each for peaceful human-wildlife coexistence in 'greened' cities.

scholarly journals Land Use Dynamics and Optimization from 2000 to 2020 in East Guangdong Province, China

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3473
Author(s):  
Yong Lai ◽  
Guangqing Huang ◽  
Shengzhong Chen ◽  
Shaotao Lin ◽  
Wenjun Lin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Landscape Connectivity ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Research Result ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Buffer Zones ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Land Use Dynamics

Anthropogenic land-use change is one of the main drivers of global environmental change. China has been on a fast track of land-use change since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. In view of the situation, this study aims to optimize land use and provide a way to effectively coordinate the development and ecological protection in China. We took East Guangdong (EGD), an underdeveloped but populous region, as a case study. We used land-use changes indexes to demonstrate the land-use dynamics in EGD from 2000 to 2020, then identified the hot spots for fast-growing areas of built-up land and simulated land use in 2030 using the future land-use simulation (FLUS) model. The results indicated that the cropland and the built-up land changed in a large proportion during the study period. Then we established the ecological security pattern (ESP) according to the minimal cumulative resistance model (MCRM) based on the natural and socioeconomic factors. Corridors, buffer zones, and the key nodes were extracted by the MCRM to maintain landscape connectivity and key ecological processes of the study area. Moreover, the study showed the way to identify the conflict zones between future built-up land expansion with the corridors and buffer zones, which will be critical areas of consideration for future land-use management. Finally, some relevant policy recommendations are proposed based on the research result.

scholarly journals Lessons learned from comparing spatially explicit models and the Partners in Flight approach to estimate population sizes of boreal birds in Alberta, Canada

The Condor ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Sólymos ◽  
Judith D Toms ◽  
Steven M Matsuoka ◽  
Steven G Cumming ◽  
Nicole K S Barker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Population Estimates ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Species Variation ◽  
Detection Distance ◽  
Spatially Explicit Models ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Partners In Flight

Abstract Estimating the population abundance of landbirds is a challenging task complicated by the amount, type, and quality of available data. Avian conservationists have relied on population estimates from Partners in Flight (PIF), which primarily uses roadside data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). However, the BBS was not designed to estimate population sizes. Therefore, we set out to compare the PIF approach with spatially explicit models incorporating roadside and off-road point-count surveys. We calculated population estimates for 81 landbird species in Bird Conservation Region 6 in Alberta, Canada, using land cover and climate as predictors. We also developed a framework to evaluate how the differences between the detection distance, time-of-day, roadside count, and habitat representation adjustments explain discrepancies between the 2 estimators. We showed that the key assumptions of the PIF population estimator were commonly violated in this region, and that the 2 approaches provided different population estimates for most species. The average differences between estimators were explained by differences in the detection-distance and time-of-day components, but these adjustments left much unexplained variation among species. Differences in the roadside count and habitat representation components explained most of the among-species variation. The variation caused by these factors was large enough to change the population ranking of the species. The roadside count bias needs serious attention when roadside surveys are used to extrapolate over off-road areas. Habitat representation bias is likely prevalent in regions sparsely and non-representatively sampled by roadside surveys, such as the boreal region of North America, and thus population estimates for these regions need to be treated with caution for certain species. Additional sampling and integrated modeling of available data sources can contribute towards more accurate population estimates for conservation in remote areas of North America.

Biophysical forcings of land-use changes from potential forestry activities in North America

2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaiguang Zhao ◽  
Robert B. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
North America ◽  
Land Use Changes

scholarly journals How to approach a many splendoured thing: Proxy Technology Assessment as a methodological praxis to study virtual experience

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizzy Bleumers ◽  
Kris Naessens ◽  
An Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Technology Assessment ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Virtual Experiences

This article introduces Proxy Technology Assessment (PTA) as a methodological approach that can widen the scope of virtual world and game research. Studies of how people experience virtual worlds and games often focus on individual in-world or in-game experiences. However, people do not perceive these worlds and games in isolation. They are embedded within a social context that has strongly intertwined online and offline components. Studying virtual experiences while accounting for these interconnections calls for new methodological approaches. PTA answers this call.Combining several methods, PTA can be used to investigate how new technology may impact and settle within people's everyday life (Pierson et al., 2006). It involves introducing related devices or applications, available today, to users in their natural setting and studying the context-embedded practices they alter or evoke. This allows researchers to detect social and functional requirements to improve the design of new technologies. These requirements, like the practices under investigation, do not stop at the outlines of a magic circle (cf. Huizinga, 1955).We will start this article by contextualizing and defining PTA. Next, we will describe the practical implementation of PTA. Each step of the procedure will be illustrated with examples and supplemented with lessons learned from two interdisciplinary scientific projects, Hi-Masquerade and Teleon, concerned with how people perceive and use virtual worlds and games respectively.

scholarly journals Continuous Improvement on Detailed Design Phase: A Process Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-113
Author(s):  
Bo Terje Kalsaas ◽  
Anders Rullestad ◽  
Hanne S. Thorud
Keyword(s):  
Design Theory ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Design Management ◽  
Government Investment ◽  
Detailed Design ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Process Perspective

AbstractThe construction project being studied is a government investment related to the relocation of a biomedical institute delivering research-based knowledge and contingency support in the fields of animal health, fish health and food safety. The project covers a total of 63,000 square meters distributed over 10 buildings with a very high degree of complexity. The design alone has required 1 million hours, which relates to a client cost of about 100 million Euro. The purpose of this paper is to study the applied methodology for managing the detailed design to identify lessons learned from the project. The theory underlying the study is inspired by lean design management and design theory linked to design as phenomena, including reciprocal interdependencies, iteration, decomposition, design as a “wicked problem”, learning, gradual maturation, etc. The article is based on an abductive research design and has been implemented as a case study where both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used.

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