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Constructing Urban Habitats: Investigating The Ecological Potential Of Integrating Natural Environments Into Buildings And Landscapes In Urban Areas
Published in Manuel Couceiro da Costa, Filipa Roseta, Joana Pestana Lages, Susana Couceiro da Costa, Architectural Research Addressing Societal Challenges, 2017
The biodiversity potential of NIBs is constrained by their inherent lack of area. Due to their constrained size, building habitat patches tend to have high edge/interior patch quality ratios and a limited potential to provide resources and high quality habitat, thereby limiting their biodiversity potential, as discussed in more detail in Section 4.2. These factors can result in building habitat patches functioning as ecological traps, thereby negatively affecting the urban area’s biodiversity (Battin, 2004). The potential of the building site to function as a high quality habitat patch, or positively contribute to the biodiversity of the region in another facet, partly depends on the connectivity potential of the site, as well as a number of design factors (Mangone, 2015b).
Influences of urban stormwater management ponds on wetlandscape connectivity
Published in Canadian Water Resources Journal / Revue canadienne des ressources hydriques, 2023
Waverley S. Birch, Michael Drescher, Rebecca C. Rooney, Jeremy Pittman
To address general concerns of urban overland flooding, which is exacerbated by wetland loss (e.g. Moudrak, Hutter, and Feltmate 2017), stormwater management (SWM) ponds are generally included in urban site planning, but these features do not qualify as wetlands (Schulte-Hostedde et al. 2007). Although newer SWM ponds often incorporate naturalized design elements, they cannot replace all ecological and hydrological wetland functions. For example, they have steep bank edges that act as a barrier to wildlife movement, and do not recharge groundwater in the manner that wetlands do, due to the presence of an impervious liner (Ontario Ministry of the Environment (OME) 2003; Tixier et al. 2012; Rooney et al. 2015). SWM ponds may even pose an ecological risk since they accumulate contaminants and sediment from urban runoff (Moore et al. 2011; Tixier et al. 2012), and can function as ecological traps (e.g. Clevenot, Carré, and Pech 2018; Sievers et al. 2018). We use Hale and Swearer’s (2016) definition of an ecological trap, which is a habitat that is either preferred by organisms over one that would result in higher fitness, or where there is evidence that organisms have no ability to discriminate between high- and low-quality habitat. Sievers et al. (2018) was coauthored by Hale, and found evidence of an ecological trap for tadpoles raised in polluted ponds, who experienced lower survival and lower response to predator olfactory cues, while showing no preference for higher quality wetland habitat.