scholarly journals Wildlife Affordances of Urban Infrastructure: A Framework to Understand Human-Wildlife Space Use

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase A. Niesner ◽  
Rachel V. Blakey ◽  
Daniel T. Blumstein ◽  
Eric S. Abelson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Movement Ecology ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Columba Livia ◽  
Urban Wildlife ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Human Perceptions ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Human Wildlife Conflict

Landscape affordances, what the environment offers an animal, are inherently species-specific to the extent that each taxon has unique needs and responses to landscape characteristics. Wildlife responses to landscape features range on a continuum from avoidance to attraction and quantifying these habits are the backbone of wildlife movement ecology. In anthropogenically modified landscapes, many taxa do not occupy areas heavily influenced by humans, while some species seem to flourish, such as coyotes (Canis latrans) and pigeons (Columba livia). Sufficient overlap in landscapes designed for human purposes (e.g., freeway underpasses, channelized waterways, and cemeteries) but which are also suitable for wildlife (e.g., by providing sources of food, shelter, and refuge) underlies wildlife persistence in urban areas and is increasingly important in the world's largest metropoles. Studying these overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife in cities provides a rich foundation for broadening human perceptions of cities as ecosystems that exhibit emergent hybridity, whereby certain anthropogenic features of urban landscapes can be used by wildlife even as they maintain their utility for humans. By examining scaling dynamics of the infrastructural signature, the phenomena of urban wildlife movement patterns conforming to the shapes of human infrastructural forms, we hope to expand on prior research in wildlife landscape ecology by stressing the importance of understanding the overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife. Further knowledge of the urban ecological commons is necessary to better design cities where emergent hybridity is leveraged toward the management goals of reducing human wildlife conflict and promoting biodiversity.

scholarly journals The Urban Wildlife Institute: Exploring Chicago's wildlife

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Magle
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Monitoring Network ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Urban Wildlife ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Bird Populations ◽  
The People ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World

The Lincoln Park Zoo founded the Urban Wildlife Institute (UWI) in 2008, with the goal of conducting science to minimize conflict between humans and wildlife in cities around the world. UWI has since created a massive and unprecedented urban wildlife biodiversity monitoring network throughout the Chicagoland region. We will briefly summarize some of our findings on Chicago’s mammal, bat, arthropod, and bird populations, with special emphasis on our database of over 200,000 images of urban wildlife captured using motion-triggered cameras. Our research has not only uncovered new information about how urban animals select habitat and persist within urban landscapes, but has also helped connect the people of Chicago to the natural world through educational outreach and citizen science initiatives such as Partners in Fieldwork, and Chicago Wildlife Watch. UWI is working to ensure humans and wildlife can coexist in cities around the world, and also to remind growing urban populations that urban areas are ecosystems that are just as capable of inspiring wonder as the wildest jungles.

Dietary breadth as a predictor of potential native avian–human conflict in urban landscapes

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry E. Charles ◽  
Wayne L. Linklater
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Food Sources ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Dietary Breadth ◽  
Human Conflict

Context Avian–human conflict is a growing issue in urban areas, yet studies of conflict tend to be species and situation specific and focus on landscape characteristics that generate or exacerbate the problem. Aims To determine characteristics of bird species that cause conflict in urban areas within their native range and to develop a model that can be used to assess the relative likelihood of a New Zealand species causing conflict in the future. Methods Ecological, behavioural and life-history characteristics of 33 conflict-causing species identified from the literature and 106 randomly selected non-conflict congeners were compared using an information-theoretic approach to multi-model selection and inference. Variables from the confidence set of models were used to develop a model that was applied to the New Zealand urban avifauna to provide a relative measure of a species’ potential to generate conflict. Key results A model including only dietary breadth best explained the conflict (ωi = 0.833). Using dietary breadth, flocking, clutch size, granivory, territoriality and non-ground nesting – the confidence model set – New Zealand’s native pukeko (Porphyrio porphyria), red-billed gull, (Larus scopulinus), and kākā (Nestor meridionalis) were identified as the three species most likely to generate conflict with urban residents. Conclusions Broad dietary requirements may allow a species to take advantage of novel and varied food sources in the urban environment and lead to population growth. Large populations at high density may amplify problems, exceeding residents’ tolerance levels and resulting in conflict. Species characteristics relating to nesting, sociality and body size were found to be uninformative. Implications Species with a broad diet, particularly those identified by this study as having a high potential for conflict, should be the focus of monitoring to identify population growth and the emergence of problems in urban areas. This will allow proactive implementation of management, improving the likelihood of conflict mitigation.

scholarly journals The Urban Wildlife Institute: Exploring Chicago's wildlife

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Magle
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Monitoring Network ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Urban Wildlife ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Bird Populations ◽  
The People ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World

The Lincoln Park Zoo founded the Urban Wildlife Institute (UWI) in 2008, with the goal of conducting science to minimize conflict between humans and wildlife in cities around the world. UWI has since created a massive and unprecedented urban wildlife biodiversity monitoring network throughout the Chicagoland region. We will briefly summarize some of our findings on Chicago’s mammal, bat, arthropod, and bird populations, with special emphasis on our database of over 200,000 images of urban wildlife captured using motion-triggered cameras. Our research has not only uncovered new information about how urban animals select habitat and persist within urban landscapes, but has also helped connect the people of Chicago to the natural world through educational outreach and citizen science initiatives such as Partners in Fieldwork, and Chicago Wildlife Watch. UWI is working to ensure humans and wildlife can coexist in cities around the world, and also to remind growing urban populations that urban areas are ecosystems that are just as capable of inspiring wonder as the wildest jungles.

scholarly journals Landscape -scale habitat associations in an urban Stock Dove Columba oenas population

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Elliot Richardson ◽  
Alexander Lees ◽  
Stuart Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Breeding Season ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Columba Livia ◽  
Habitat Associations ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Pilot Model ◽  
Large Trees

Abstract While some species are known to thrive in urban areas, urban expansion is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Columbids such as feral Rock Doves Columba livia domestica and Common Woodpigeon Columba palumbus have adapted extremely well to the urban environment in Europe and beyond, but the Stock Dove Columba oenas, a bird of farmland and woodland edge in the UK and of national conservation concern, is encountered far more rarely in urban areas. Here we explore the multi-scale landscape associations of the little-studied Stock Dove within the urban matrix of Greater Manchester, UK, as a step towards identifying its long-term conservation needs. We built a pilot model from historical citizen science records to identify potentially occupied patches within the city, and then surveyed these patches for Stock Dove during Spring 2019. We combined the survey results with citizen science records from the same period. We described the habitat and landscape characteristics of these patches using four variables at different scales and twelve unscaled variables. We used a three-stage random forest approach to identify a subset of these variables for interpretation and a subset for prediction for the presence of Stock Dove within these patches. Key variables for predicting Stock Dove presence were their relative abundance in the region immediately beyond the core urban area, the greenness (NDVI) of the environment around patches, and the canopy cover of individual trees over 20m high within patches. Stock Doves tended to be associated with habitats with more surface water during the non-breeding season than the breeding season. Our results highlight the importance of large trees within urban greenspace and the importance of softer boundaries around urban patches for Stock Doves. While Stock Dove share many traits with species that are successful in the urban environment, they remain relatively poor urban adapters.

scholarly journals Nature-Based Deployment Strategies for Multiple Paces of Change: The Case of Oimachi, Japan

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Roggema ◽  
Nico Tillie ◽  
Greg Keeffe ◽  
Wanglin Yan
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Response Analysis ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Deployment Strategy ◽  
Planning Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Right

In this article a planning approach is proposed to accommodate different paces of urbanisation. Instead of responding to a single problem with a Pavlov-type of response, analysis shows that the transformational tempi of different urban landscapes require multiple deployment strategies to develop urban environments that are sustainable and resilient. The application of nature-based solutions, enhancing both human and natural health in cities, is used as the foundation for the design of deployment strategies that respond to different paces of urban change. The results show that urban characteristics, such as population density and built space is, partly, dependent on the underlying landscape characteristics, therefore show specific development pathways. To create liveable and sustainable urban areas that can deal holistically with a range of intertwined problems, specific deployment strategies should be used in each specific urban context. This benefits the city-precinct as a whole and at the local scale. Even small nature-based solutions, applied as the right deployment strategy in the right context, have profound impact as the starting point of a far-reaching urban transformation. The case-study for Oimachi in Japan illustrates how this planning approach can be applied, how the different urban rhythms are identified, and to which results this leads.

scholarly journals Urban compactness and growth patterns in Spanish intermediate cities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Jiménez Romera ◽  
Agustín Hernández Aja ◽  
Mariano Vázquez Espí
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Functional Integration ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Growth Patterns ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
Global Evidence

Contemporary processes of urbanization have outpaced the traditional notion of city. Connectivity has become a distinctive characteristic of urban spaces, so that networked cities don’t rely anymore on continuous urbanized areas, but on connections that rarely leave a direct spatial footprint. The new spatial structure of urban areas include greater inter-penetration of built-up and open spaces, and the emergence of urban enclaves, which can be spatially isolated despite being functionally connected to a city. In order to study these enclaves and their impact on urban form, a sample of 47 Spanish functional urban areas was examined, ranging from 36,000 to 6.0 million inhabitants. Land use polygons provided by SIOSE were grouped into three main categories (residential, non-residential and urban infrastructure) and cross-matched with functional urban areas defined by AUDES (an iterative method than combines morphological and functional criteria) in order to calculate compactness proximity index, gross and net density. Factors that influence urban compactness were identified: most northern and some coastal urban areas display a low compactness which can be attributed to orographic conditions; bigger cities tend to display high compactness, but smaller ones display a great diversity of values, from the highest to the lowest. A further analysis of small and intermediate cities helped to identify two complementary mechanisms of urban growth, spatial expansion of core areas and functional integration of peripheral nuclei, whose ocurrence in different proportions can explain the variation of compactness in the studied sample. References Angel, S.; Parent, J.; Civco, D. L. (2012) ‘The fragmentation of urban landscapes: global evidence of a key attribute of the spatial structure of cities, 1990-2000’, Environment and Urbanization, 24 (1), 249-283. Ascher, F. (1995) Métapolis ou l'avenir des villes. (Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob.) Dupuy, G. (1991) L'urbanisme des réseaux, théories et méthodes. (Paris: Armand Colin.) Harvey, D. (1996) ‘Cities or urbanization?’, City 1 (2): 38-61. IGN (2007) SIOSE, Sistema de Información sobre Ocupación del Suelo (http://www.siose.es/), accessed 31 Jan. 2017. Ruiz, F. (2011) AUDES, Áreas Urbanas de España (http://alarcos.esi.uclm.es/per/fruiz/audes/), accessed 31 Jan. 2017.

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 A multiscale assessment of Red-tailed Hawk reproductive success relative to urban density and habitat type

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin H White ◽  
Jessi L Brown ◽  
Zachary E Ormsby
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Nesting Success ◽  
Arid Environments ◽  
Hatch Date ◽  
Urban Density ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Suburban Areas ◽  
Breeding Seasons

Abstract Despite the unique threats to wildlife in urban areas, many raptors have established successfully reproducing urban populations. To identify variations in raptor breeding ecology within an urban area, we compared metrics of Red-tailed Hawk reproductive attempts to landscape characteristics in Reno and Sparks, NV, USA during the 2015 and 2016 breeding seasons. We used the Apparent Nesting Success and logistic exposure methods to measure nesting success of the Red-tailed Hawks. We used generalized linear models to relate nesting success and fledge rate to habitat type, productivity to hatch date (Julian day) and hatch date to urban density. Nesting success was 86% and 83% for the respective years. Nesting success increased in grassland-agricultural and shrub habitats and decreased in riparian habitat within the urban landscape. Productivity was 2.23 and 2.03 per nest for the breeding seasons. Fledge rates were 72% and 77%, respectively, and decreased in riparian areas. Nestlings hatched earlier with increased urban density and earliest in suburban areas, following a negative quadratic curve. Nesting success and productivity for this population were high relative to others in North America. Productivity increased in habitats where ground prey was more accessible. We suggest that suburban areas, if not frequently disturbed, provide sufficient resources to sustain Red-tailed Hawks over extended periods. As urban expansion continues in arid environments globally, we stress that researchers monitor reproductive output across the urban predator guild to elucidate patterns in population dynamics and adaptation.

scholarly journals Morpho-Physio-Biochemical Attributes of Roadside Trees as Potential Tools for Biomonitoring of Air Quality and Environmental Health in Urban Areas

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Ha Na You ◽  
Myeong Ja Kwak ◽  
Sun Mi Je ◽  
Jong Kyu Lee ◽  
Yea Ji Lim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Health ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Biochemical Parameters ◽  
Lipid Peroxide ◽  
Platanus Occidentalis ◽  
Physiological Variables ◽  
Sources Of Pollution ◽  
Species Specific

Environmental pollution is an important issue in metropolitan areas, and roadside trees are directly affected by various sources of pollution to which they exhibit numerous responses. The aim of the present study was to identify morpho-physio-biochemical attributes of maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba L.) and American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis L.) growing under two different air quality conditions (roadside with high air pollution, RH and roadside with low air pollution, RL) and to assess the possibility of using their physiological and biochemical parameters as biomonitoring tools in urban areas. The results showed that the photosynthetic rate, photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiencies, and photochromic contents were generally low in RH in both G. biloba and P. occidentalis. However, water-use efficiency and leaf temperature showed high values in RH trees. Among biochemical parameters, in G. biloba, the lipid peroxide content was higher in RH than in RL trees, but in P. occidentalis, this content was lower in RH than in RL trees. In both species, physiological activities were low in trees planted in areas with high levels of air pollution, whereas their biochemical and morphological variables showed different responses to air pollution. Thus, we concluded that it is possible to determine species-specific physiological variables affected by regional differences of air pollution in urban areas, and these findings may be helpful for monitoring air quality and environmental health using trees.

scholarly journals Evaluating Landscape Attractiveness with Geospatial Data, a Case Study in Flanders, Belgium

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 703
Author(s):  
Astrid Vannoppen ◽  
Jeroen Degerickx ◽  
Anne Gobin
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Bare Soil ◽  
Geospatial Data ◽  
Soil Conditions ◽  
Landscape Indicators ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Landscape Quality

Attractive landscapes are diverse and resilient landscapes that provide a multitude of essential ecosystem services. The development of landscape policy to protect and improve landscape attractiveness, thereby ensuring the provision of ecosystem services, is ideally adapted to region specific landscape characteristics. In addition, trends in landscape attractiveness may be linked to certain policies, or the absence of policies over time. A spatial and temporal evaluation of landscape attractiveness is thus desirable for landscape policy development. In this paper, landscape attractiveness was spatially evaluated for Flanders (Belgium) using landscape indicators derived from geospatial data as a case study. Large local differences in landscape quality in (i) rural versus urban areas and (ii) between the seven agricultural regions in Flanders were found. This observed spatial variability in landscape attractiveness demonstrated that a localized approach, considering the geophysical characteristics of each individual region, would be required in the development of landscape policy to improve landscape quality in Flanders. Some trends in landscape attractiveness were related to agriculture in Flanders, e.g., a slight decrease in total agricultural area, decrease in dominance of grassland, maize and cereals, a decrease in crop diversity, sharp increase in the adoption of agri-environmental agreements (AEA) and a decrease in bare soil conditions in winter. The observed trends and spatial variation in landscape attractiveness can be used as a tool to support policy analysis, assess the potential effects of future policy plans, identify policy gaps and evaluate past landscape policy.

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