Biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships in spatially heterogeneous, dynamic urban landscapes

当前前所未有的城市发展时代已经极大地改变了生态系统的结构、功能和生物多样性，从而改变了我们的健康和福祉所依赖的生态系统服务(或来自自然的好处)。为了创造更可持续的城市，我们需要确定机会来管理城市地区的生物多样性保护和环境保护。在气候变化的背景下，这一点尤其紧迫，如果不采取更大的适应措施，这将对城市居民产生严重的负面影响。然而，我们对多功能城市景观的管理能力落后于我们这样做的愿望，这是因为我们在与管理相关的尺度上对景观结构、生物多样性和ES之间的关系的了解有限。鉴于城市土地转换是最不可逆和增长最快的全球变化形式之一，我们需要进行研究，考虑城市地区多个ES与生物多样性之间的相互作用，同时将这些关系置于适当的空间和时间背景下。 我和我的学生将在三个组成部分的项目中结合综合、观测和建模方法，以蒙特利尔为重点案例，研究气候变化中城市绿地模式与发展、生物多样性和生态系统之间的相互作用。我们的第一个目标是衡量生物多样性和城市绿地提供的多种气候相关服务之间的联系，这构成了我的新兴研究计划的基线。我们的第二个目标是扩展这项工作，以考虑景观结构对空间尺度上的生物多样性和ES的影响。我们将使用一个简单的模型来询问景观配置是否会导致生物多样性和生态系统之间的权衡，并使用基于实地的研究来评估私人管理对生物多样性和生态系统供应的影响程度。我们的第三个目标结合了时间视角，考虑了气候变化导致的生物多样性-生态系统关系的变化。我们将使用先进的传感器方法来测量树冠覆盖率和多样性对城市气温的影响，并开发情景来评估夏季高温的变化可能如何改变温带调节服务。 提出的目标推进了城市景观生态学不断发展的领域，并提高了我们对生物多样性和生态系统在空间和时间上的关系的理解。与我们以解决方案为导向的研究的目标一致，这项工作也代表着朝着为加拿大城市的城市规划者、管理者和决策者开发生物多样性和ES使用指标迈出了重要的一步。这项研究涉及科学家、管理人员和公民之间的协作，为本科生和研究生实习生提供高级技能发展和网络机会。鉴于加拿大城市生态学研究和实践的增长，学生将为一系列基础科学和应用职业做好准备。

The current era of unprecedented urban growth has drastically changed ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity, and consequently the ecosystem services (ES) (or benefits from nature) our health and wellbeing depend on. To create more sustainable cities, we need to identify opportunities to manage urban areas for biodiversity conservation and ES provision. This is particularly urgent in the context of climate change, which will have serious negative effects on urban residents if greater adaptation measures are not taken. However, our ability to manage for multifunctional urban landscapes lags behind our desire to do so, due to our limited understanding of the relationships between landscape structure, biodiversity, and ES at management-relevant scales. Given that conversion to urban land is among the most irreversible and fastest growing forms of global change, we need research that considers interactions among multiple ES and biodiversity in urban areas, while placing these relationships in the appropriate spatial and temporal context. My students and I will combine synthesis, observational, and modelling approaches within 3 component projects to study interactions among patterns of urban green space and development, biodiversity, and ES in a changing climate using the city of Montreal as a focal case. Our first objective is to measure associations among biodiversity and multiple climate-related services provided by urban green space, forming the baseline of my emerging research program. Our second objective expands this work to consider the influence of landscape structure on biodiversity and ES across spatial scales. We will use a simple model to ask whether landscape configuration drives tradeoffs among biodiversity and ES, and field-based studies to assess the extent to which private management influences biodiversity and ES provision. Our third objective integrates a temporal perspective, considering changes in biodiversity-ES relationships due to climate change. We will use advanced sensor approaches to measure effects of tree canopy cover and diversity on urban air temperature, and develop scenarios to assess how changes in summer heat may alter temperate regulation services. The proposed objectives advance the growing field of urban landscape ecology, and improve our understanding of the relationship among biodiversity and ES over space and time. In line with our goals to produce solution-oriented research, this work also represents an important step towards developing biodiversity and ES indicators of use to urban planners, managers, and decision-makers in Canadian cities. This research involves collaboration among scientists, managers, and citizens, providing advanced skill development and networking opportunities for undergraduate and graduate trainees. Given the growth of urban ecology research and practice in Canada, students will be prepared for a range of basic science and applied careers.