Golf courses and wetland fauna

Golf courses are often considered to be chemical-intensive ecosystems with negative impacts on fauna. Here we provide evidence that golf courses can contribute to the support and conservation of wetland fauna, i.e., amphibians and macroinvertebrates. Comparisons of amphibian occurrence, diversity of macroinvetebrates, and occurrence of species of conservation concern were made between permanent freshwater ponds surveyed on golf courses around Sweden's capital city, Stockholm, and off-course ponds in nature-protected areas and residential parklands. A total of 71 macroinvertebrate species were recorded in the field study, with no significant difference between golf course ponds and off-course ponds at the species, genus, or family levels. A within-group similarities test showed that golf course ponds have a more homogenous species composition than ponds in nature-protected areas and ponds in residential parkland. Within the macroinvertebrate group, a total of 11 species of odonates were identified, with no difference detected between the categories of ponds, nor any spatial autocorrelation. Significant differences were found between pond categories in the occurrence of five species of amphibians, although anuran occurrence did not differ between ponds. The great crested newt (Triturus cristatus) was significantly associated with golf course ponds, but the smooth newt (Triturus vulgaris) was not. We found no evidence of any correlation between pond size and occurrence of amphibians. Among the taxa of conservation concern included in the sample, all amphibians are nationally protected in Sweden, with the internationally threatened T. cristatus more frequently found in golf course ponds. Among macroinveterbrates of conservation status, the large white-faced darter dragonfly (Leucorrhinia pectoralis) was only detected in golf course ponds, and Tricholeiochiton fagesi (Trichoptera) was only found in one off-course pond. GIS results revealed that golf courses provide over a quarter of all available permanent, freshwater ponds in central greater Stockholm. We assert that golf courses have the potential to contribute to wetland fauna support, particularly in urban settings where they may significantly contribute to wetland creation. We propose a greater involvement of ecologists in the design of golf courses to further bolster this potential

Mapping Flood Risk Uncertainty Zones in Support of Urban Resilience Planning

River flooding and urbanization are processes of different character that take place worldwide. As the latter tends to make the consequences of the former worse, together with the uncertainties related to future climate change and flood-risk modeling, there is a need to both use existing tools and develop new ones that help the management and planning of urban environments. In this article a prototype tool, based on estimated maximum land cover roughness variation, the slope of the ground, and the quality of the used digital elevation models, and that can produce flood ‘uncertainty zones’ of varying width around modeled flood boundaries, is presented. The concept of uncertainty, which urban planners often fail to consider in the spatial planning process, changes from something very difficult into an advantage in this way. Not only may these uncertainties be easier to understand by the urban planners, but the uncertainties may also function as a communication tool between the planners and other stakeholders. Because flood risk is something that urban planners always need to consider, these uncertainty zones can function both as buffer areas against floods, and as blue-green designs of significant importance for a variety of ecosystem services. As the Earth is warming and the world is urbanizing at rates and scales unprecedented in history, we believe that new tools for urban resilience planning are not only urgently needed, but also will have a positive impact on urban planning

Promoting Partnership between Urban Design and Urban Ecology through Social-Ecological Resilience Building

A closer partnership between urban design and urban ecology can yield new knowledge with the predictive advancement of both fields. However, achieving such partnership is not always a straight-forward process due to different epistemological departures. This chapter provides a rudimentary background of the fields of urban design and urban ecology and familiarizes readers with some epistemological characteristics that are useful to consider in all forms of partnership activities between designers and ecologists. Social-ecological resilience offers a useful framework for inquiry of particular relevance for urban transition at a time when global societal challenges of massive biodiversity loss and climate change require urgent attention and where wicked environmental problems require creative urban tinkering. Such a framework could open up for more dynamic research approaches with a greater potential to bridge the gap between design and ecology that has tended to be dominated by relatively static design approaches in the past, ignoring a more non-linear understanding of the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems. The chapter ends by focusing on some important determinants for cooperation and dealing with ‘Research Through Design(ing)’ as a viable methodology for transition to urban sustainability

Urbanization in and for the Anthropocene

Peer reviewe

Frontiers in Social–Ecological Urbanism

This paper describes a new approach in urban ecological design, referred to as social–ecological urbanism (SEU). It draws from research in resilience thinking and space syntax in the analysis of relationships between urban processes and urban form at the microlevel of cities, where social and ecological services are directly experienced by urban dwellers. The paper elaborates on three types of media for urban designers to intervene in urban systems, including urban form, institutions, and discourse, that together function as a significant enabler of urban change. The paper ends by presenting four future research frontiers with a potential to advance the field of social–ecological urbanism: (1) urban density and critical biodiversity thresholds, (2) human and non-human movement in urban space, (3) the retrofitting of urban design, and (4) reversing the trend of urban ecological illiteracy through affordance designs that connect people with nature and with each other

The Role of University Campuses in Reconnecting Humans to the Biosphere

In this paper, we explore the potential for integrating university campuses in a global sustainability agenda for a closer reconnection of urban residents to the biosphere. This calls for a socio-cultural transition that allows universities and colleges to reconnect to the biosphere and become active stewards of the Earth System. Recognizing their pivotal role of fostering coming generations of humans, university campuses represent a unique socio-cultural setting to promote sustainable development in practice. Among others, this involves the nurturing of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Antropocene era, which is characterized by ongoing climate change and massive loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We explore the traditional campus setting, its role as a community for rejuvenating town planning and its role as a governance authority that may promote or retard sustainable development with an ecological focus. We explore the “sustainable” university and describe the campus as an ecosystem and how a resilient campus can be designed to meet the novel and critical challenges of the Anthropocene. We conclude by providing some policy recommendations for higher educational institutes to speed up their ambitions in the area of sustainable biosphere management

Towards a Spatial Morphology of Urban Social-Ecological Systems

The discussion on sustainable urban development is ubiquitous these days. Concerning the more specific field of urban design and urban morphology we can identify a movement from a first generation of research and practice, primarily addressing climate change, and a second generation, broadening the field to also encompass biodiversity. The two have quite different implications for urban design and urban morphology. The first, stressing the integration of more advanced technological systems to the urban fabric, such as energy and waste disposal systems, but more conspicuously, public and private transport systems, often leading to rather conventional design solutions albeit technologically enhanced. The second generation ask for a more direct involvement of urban form, asking the question: how are future urban designs going to harbor not only social and economic systems, which they have always done, but ecological as well, that is, how are we in research on urban form, as support for future practice in urban design, develop knowledge that bridges the ancient dichotomy between human and ecological systems. This paper presents, firstly, a conceptual discussion on this topic, based in Resilience Theory and Urban Morphology, secondly, the layout of a principal research field towards a spatial morphology of urban social-ecological systems, where strategic research tasks are identified.QC 2012011