Fragments, functions and flows - the scaling of biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban ecosystems

碎片、功能和流动——城市生态系统中生物多样性和生态系统服务的扩展

基本信息

批准号：
NE/J015067/1
负责人：
James Harris
金额：
$ 106.02万
依托单位：
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2012
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2012 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FJ015067%2F1
关键词：
Fragments functions flows scaling biodiversity

项目摘要

Urban areas cover just 2.8% of the Earth's land area, but over 50% of the human population lives in them, and these proportions are growing rapidly. Such heavy concentration of people has a wide variety of important consequences. Those for their relations with the environment have attracted much recent attention from the media, pressure groups, policy makers, researchers, and local and national government. Of particular concern have been how improvements can most effectively be made to the environmental conditions experienced in urban areas, to the levels of interaction between urban dwellers and the natural environment, and to the contribution of urban areas to the broader scale provision of ecosystem services. This raises the key issue of the form of relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban areas, how the structure of urban areas (the spatial structure of the different kinds and extents of impermeable and permeable surfaces; urban form) influences these relationships, and thus how the existing structure can best be managed and how future structure can be planned to best effect.Although understanding of the levels and distributions both of biodiversity and of ecosystem services in urban areas has improved dramatically in recent years the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services have been extremely poorly studied in urban areas (and are largely absent from major collations of empirical studies). Indeed, these environments pose significant and unusual challenges:- the urban landscape is highly fragmented, with large portions sealed by buildings and paving;- greenspaces are embedded in a complex mosaic of buildings and roads that imposes major constraints and directionality on the flows of biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery across the urban landscape;- the intensity of human management of these environments can give rise to spatial patterns and scales of flows of energy, materials and biodiversity on which ecosystem services depend that would not naturally occur; and,- the very aggregations of people that give rise to urban areas typically necessitate less conventional approaches to conducting ecological research therein, involving greater engagement with the general public, and less dependence on the use of large pieces of equipment, which is "out of bounds" to the general population.In order to determine these biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships, develop deeper understanding and to test this understanding our overall approach to this project involves five main steps. We shall:- characterise the spatial ecological structure of urban areas;- determine biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships and the influence of connectivity on them;- determine the flows of biodiversity, and service delivery in selected cases;- experimentally perturb those flows to determine the impact on ecosystem service delivery; and- integrate these findings in the form of spatially explicit models which will form the basis of an "ecosystem service" layer for GIS models.This will enable us to deepen understanding, and to provide illustrations for stakeholders (such as planners, local people and NGOs) as to how "scenarios" of different development proposals might be tested, to provide support for decisions based on sound science and stakeholder engagement.

城市地区仅占地球陆地面积的2.8%，但居住着超过50%的人口，而且这一比例正在迅速增长。人员的高度集中会产生多种重要后果。它们与环境的关系最近引起了媒体、压力团体、政策制定者、研究人员以及地方和国家政府的广泛关注。特别值得关注的是如何最有效地改善城市地区的环境条件、城市居民与自然环境之间的互动水平以及城市地区对更广泛的生态系统服务提供的贡献。这就提出了城市地区生物多样性和生态系统服务之间关系形式的关键问题，城市地区的结构（不透水和透水表面的不同种类和范围的空间结构；城市形态）如何影响这些关系，从而影响这些关系。如何最好地管理现有结构以及如何规划未来的结构以达到最佳效果。尽管近年来对城市地区生物多样性和生态系统服务的水平和分布的了解有了显着提高，但生物多样性和生态系统服务之间的关系也发生了变化。在城市中的研究极少领域（并且在实证研究的主要整理中基本上不存在）。事实上，这些环境带来了重大且不寻常的挑战： - 城市景观高度分散，大部分被建筑物和铺路封闭； - 绿地嵌入复杂的建筑物和道路中，对生物多样性的流动施加了重大限制和方向性整个城市景观的生态系统服务提供； - 人类对这些环境的管理强度可能会产生生态系统服务所依赖的能源、物质和生物多样性流动的空间格局和规模，而这些空间格局和规模是不会自然发生的；而且，城市地区的人口聚集通常需要采用不太传统的方法来进行生态研究，包括更多地与公众接触，并减少对大型设备使用的依赖，这是“出于为了确定这些生物多样性-生态系统服务关系，加深理解并测试这种理解，我们对该项目的总体方法涉及五个主要步骤。我们将： - 描述城市地区的空间生态结构； - 确定生物多样性-生态系统服务关系以及连通性对其的影响； - 确定选定情况下生物多样性的流动和服务提供； - 通过实验扰乱这些流动以确定对生态系统服务提供的影响； - 以空间明确模型的形式整合这些发现，这将构成 GIS 模型“生态系统服务”层的基础。这将使我们能够加深理解，并为利益相关者（例如规划者、当地人和非政府组织）如何测试不同发展提案的“场景”，为基于合理科学和利益相关者参与的决策提供支持。