The Biological Deserts Fallacy: Cities in Their Landscapes Contribute More than We Think to Regional Biodiversity

2020/11/23 by Erica N. Spotswood, Erica N Spotswood, Erin E. Beller +9 · 33 citations
Environmental Science · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Urban Green Space and Health #Economic and Environmental Valuation

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/biosci/biaa155

Abstract

Cities are both embedded within and ecologically linked to their surrounding landscapes. Although urbanization poses a substantial threat to biodiversity, cities also support many species, some of which have larger populations, faster growth rates, and higher productivity in cities than outside of them. Despite this fact, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the potentially beneficial links between cities and their surroundings. We identify five pathways by which cities can benefit regional ecosystems by releasing species from threats in the larger landscape, increasing regional habitat heterogeneity and genetic diversity, acting as migratory stopovers, preadapting species to climate change, and enhancing public engagement and environmental stewardship. Increasing recognition of these pathways could help cities identify effective strategies for supporting regional biodiversity conservation and could provide a science-based platform for incorporating biodiversity alongside other urban greening goals.

Cited by

• Promoting urban biodiversity for the benefit of people and nature
• Urban refugia enhance persistence of an endangered endemic keystone lizard threatened by the rapid spread of an invasive predator
• Urban Bats: City Lovers or Refugees?
• Historical racial redlining and contemporary patterns of income inequality negatively affect birds, their habitat, and people in Los Angeles, California
• Effects of human activities and environmental factors on the behaviour of urban Eurasian Coots Fulica atra
• A systematic review and meta‐analysis on urban arthropod diversity
• Urban biodiversity and green space maintenance: limitations and chances in German cities
• The potential of soundscapes as an ecosystem monitoring tool for urban biodiversity
• Building the neighborhood for the trees: Illuminating win–wins for housing densification and nature
• Urban soil Gammaproteobacteria diversity, shaped by biodiverse land use, predicts a lower risk of developing allergy in children
• Ecological Insights from Above: Linking Habitat-Level NDVI Patterns with NDMI, LST and, Elevation in a Small Mediterranean City (Italy)
• Navigating the Path to Sustainable Rurbanity: The Assemblage of Livelihood Pursuits in E‐Waste Hubs of Urban Accra
• Misunderstanding the free‐ranging cat issue: Response to Debrot et al. 2022
• Designing cities for everyday nature
• Human-modified landscapes provide key foraging areas for a threatened flying mammal: The grey-headed flying-fox. [europepmc]
• Human-wildlife interactions: presence of the ground-nesting Spotted Thick-knee across a South African mosaic urban landscape. [europepmc]
• Place-Based Bias in Environmental Scholarship Derived from Social-Ecological Landscapes of Fear. [europepmc]
• Rurbanity : a concept for the interdisciplinary study of rural-urban transformation. [europepmc]
• Mammal Roadkills in Lithuanian Urban Areas: A 15-Year Study. [europepmc]
• Cities of the Anthropocene: urban sustainability in an eco-evolutionary perspective. [europepmc]
• Modelling Red-Crowned Parrot (Psittaciformes: Amazona viridigenalis [Cassin, 1853]) distributions in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas using elevation and vegetation indices and their derivatives. [europepmc]
• Patterns in bird and pollinator occupancy and richness in a mosaic of urban office parks across scales and seasons. [europepmc]
• Assessing habitat connectivity of rare species to inform urban conservation planning. [europepmc]
• Diversity and Distribution of Avifauna in the Northeast of Addis Ababa, Central Ethiopia. [europepmc]
• Using unstructured crowd-sourced data to evaluate urban tolerance of terrestrial native animal species within a California Mega-City. [europepmc]
• Designing cities for everyday nature. [europepmc]
• The One Health approach in urban ecosystem rehabilitation: An evidence-based framework for designing sustainable cities. [europepmc]
• Interrelationships and Trade-Offs between Urban Natural Space Use and Biodiversity. [europepmc]
• Migratory birds benefit from urban environments in a highly anthropized Neotropical region. [europepmc]
• Urban Flora Biodiversity of Some Continental Cities of the Po Plain (Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy). [europepmc]
• The effect of habitat health and environmental change on cultural diversity and richness in animals. [europepmc]
• Seasonal variation in floral resource use by a hover fly (Melangyna) (Diptera: Syrphidae) and the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in an urban setting. [europepmc]
• Cultivated Vegetation Shapes Diversity and Stability of Spontaneous Herbaceous Communities in Residential Green Spaces. [europepmc]

Related

• Motivations for Conserving Urban Biodiversity
• Ecology for future cities
• The negative impact of urban sprawl on biodiversity: A simulation approach to genetic diversity in European cities
• Multicity research networks are needed to address global One Health challenges
• Urban Biodiversity and Socioecological Imaginaries: Cities as Laboratories for a Multispecies Future - Matthew Gandy, Natura Urbana. Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (Cambridge, Massachusetts, the MIT Press, 2022, 432 p.)