‘Ecological land-use complementation’ for building resilience in urban ecosystems

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Abstract

Few scientific analyses exist on how different land uses can be configured for greater support of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Based on ecological premises, and through a synthesis of information derived from the literature related to urban ecology, this paper elaborates on the potential biodiversity benefits of ‘ecological land-use complementation’ (ELC). The approach builds on the idea that land uses in urban green areas could synergistically interact to support biodiversity when clustered together in different combinations. As proposed, ELC may not only provide for increased habitat availability for species, but also promote landscape complementation/supplementation functions and other critical ecosystem processes; hence, realize ‘emergent’ ecological functions of land use. Planners and urban designers could adopt ELC to promote ecosystem resilience when planning new urban areas, such as in the support of ‘response diversity’ among functional species groups, and in the support of ecosystem services. ELC-structures in urban landscapes could also be used as arenas to promote participatory management approaches and Local Agenda 21. The paper concludes by summarizing some guiding principles for urban planning and design.

Introduction

Urban ecosystems are the most complex mosaics of vegetative land cover and multiple land uses of any landscape (Foresman et al., 1997). Urban land uses are in a state of continuous flux, where change is the norm rather than the exception. Although decisions governing land-use change almost exclusively occur at the local level (Theobald et al., 2000), such change may be driven by non-local drivers that cannot be anticipated in advance (Altieri et al., 1999). Throughout the dynamic transformation of land use, less desirable, unwanted states may be witnessed in urban areas, such as when the biota increasingly is lost due to habitat degradation, fragmentation and loss, with the subsequent loss and thinning out of ecosystem services. Such ‘benefits that people obtain from ecosystems’ include provisioning services (the products obtained from ecosystems); regulating services (the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes); cultural services (the nonmaterial benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences); and the supporting services (those that are necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services) (MA, 2005).

The loss of such services also leads to loss of ecosystem resilience and options for future generations (Folke et al., 2004). Although the concept of resilience holds different meanings to scientists (Folke, in press), it is used here as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks (Berkes et al., 2003, Carpenter and Folke, 2006, Holling, 1973). This also includes an ecosystem's capacity to recover from management mistakes (Fischer et al., 2006).

Resilience building should be part of the agenda of urban spatial planning and design. To date, urban development generates some of the greatest local extinction rates of species and frequently eradicates a large proportion of native flora and fauna (McKinney, 2002). Land use in urban areas has also a particularly strong influence on biodiversity, and will likely have the largest effect on terrestrial ecosystems in the coming century (Sala et al., 2000). As recent studies of satellite data indicate (Hansen et al., 2004), land use continues to intensify in formerly occupied areas (e.g., urban areas) often with an overlap of location of areas rich in biodiversity (Ricketts and Imhoff, 2003). Humans tend to settle in areas with high ecosystem productivity with people most dense on lands suitable for agriculture or in low elevation and coastal areas that also support high levels of biodiversity (Hansen et al., 2004, Ricketts and Imhoff, 2003).

There is much to be gained from building in ecological functions in the accommodation of land uses in the future growth of cities. This, however, requires a much stronger partnership among ecologists, urban designers, landscape architects, and urban residents than has hitherto been the case and more knowledge about the functioning of urban ecosystems needs to be developed (Felson and Pickett, 2005). While much is known about the interactions between land-use change and biodiversity at the global level, little analysis exists on how varying landscape designs influence landscape functions in specific contexts (e.g., Hobbs, 1993, Hobbs, 1997), and on the synergistic effects that different land uses may have in terms of supporting processes essential for biodiversity. The aim of this paper is therefore to synthesize information on land-use configurations that more optimally support ecosystem processes and promote resilience in urban settings, and to elucidate some guiding principles for urban planning and design.

Section snippets

Scope of the paper

Through a review of the ecological literature (mainly urban ecology), this paper focuses on land-use combinations that ecological premises suggest promote biodiversity. Such combinations are here referred to as ‘ecological land-use complementation’ (ELC). This approach builds on the idea that constituent land uses synergistically interact to support biodiversity when clustered together relative to when they are interspersed in a heavily developed urban matrix.

While practitioners may not be

Land-use complementation of urban green patches

Ecological research shows that the species–area relationship is generally applicable for urban ecosystems. For example, this has been shown for plants (Dawe, 1995), amphibians (Cornelis and Hermy, 2004), birds (Fernandez-Juricic and Jokimäki, 2001, Morimoto et al., 2006), and mammals (Dickman, 1987). Drawing on habitat island research, Fernandez-Juricic and Jokimäki (2001) found a general consistency in the patterns of occupancy among bird communities in city-parks from southern and northern

Discussion

As suggested by the examples presented above, ecological land-use complementation may not only increase habitat-availability for species confined to urban areas, but also promote landscape complementation/supplementation functions that in turn nurture species movement, facilitating key ecosystem processes such as pollination and seed dispersal. Hence, ELC-structures may promote ecosystem functions of one or several land use types that are not provided for when these are located as single,

Conclusions

Conservation biology increasingly needs to address the habitats in which human beings live, work, and play (Rosenzweig, 2003). Nowhere is this more pressing than in city-regions where scarcity of available natural land is high and where urban development generates some of the greatest species’ extinction rates on Earth. Novel approaches for biodiversity conservation and management should therefore be developed and tested in cities that also seek to incorporate urban residents and interest

Acknowledgements

The author's work has been funded by research grants from the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) and the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The author expresses his gratitude's to Jonas Adner for his nice artwork, to several anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript, and to Tim Daw, University of Newcastle, for language editing.

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