Our research vision is to conduct solutions oriented science to enhance biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing in urban and urbanizing landscapes. We use field observation/experiments, advanced sensor data, and synthesis approaches to ask how landscape structure, land-use history, and biodiversity interact to impact biodiversity, ecosystem services, and their interaction in urban and urbanizing landscapes. While research in the lab is strongly grounded in landscape and ecosystem ecology, we recognize that addressing complex ecological problems is inherently interdisciplinary. Our research group prioritizes breadth over depth. This means we use many different taxa and methods to address broad (often interdisciplinary) questions, rather than focusing on one taxa.
Why Cities?
We live in an urban world! More than half the world’s people (and > 80% of Canadians) live in cities, and conversion to urban land is among the most irreversible and fastest growing forms of global change. This era of unprecedented urban growth has markedly changed ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity, and consequently the ecosystem services that our health and wellbeing depend on. To work towards more sustainable, liveable cities, it is important to understand where there are opportunities to manage cities for increased biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision. Cities also make fascinating ecological study systems! Urban landscapes are complex mosaics of land-cover types, characterized by different land-use histories, vegetation conditions, management, and climate. This high heterogeneity and interaction of natural and anthropogenic influences makes urban areas ideal laboratories for exploring the sensitivity of biodiversity and ecosystem services to spatial and temporal drivers. Characterizing these relationships in urban systems can thus deepen our conceptual understanding of the links between landscape structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem services more broadly.
Why Cities?
We live in an urban world! More than half the world’s people (and > 80% of Canadians) live in cities, and conversion to urban land is among the most irreversible and fastest growing forms of global change. This era of unprecedented urban growth has markedly changed ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity, and consequently the ecosystem services that our health and wellbeing depend on. To work towards more sustainable, liveable cities, it is important to understand where there are opportunities to manage cities for increased biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision. Cities also make fascinating ecological study systems! Urban landscapes are complex mosaics of land-cover types, characterized by different land-use histories, vegetation conditions, management, and climate. This high heterogeneity and interaction of natural and anthropogenic influences makes urban areas ideal laboratories for exploring the sensitivity of biodiversity and ecosystem services to spatial and temporal drivers. Characterizing these relationships in urban systems can thus deepen our conceptual understanding of the links between landscape structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem services more broadly.
Themes
Urban Trees
|
Community science
|
Forest Resilience
|
|
Human dimensions of urban biodiversity |
Urban biodiversity patterns |
|
|
|
Ecosystem services
|
Environmental justice
|