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

当前，城市规模空前增长，生态系统结构、功能和生物多样性发生了巨大变化，人类健康和福祉所依赖的生态系统服务（或自然效益）也随之发生了变化。为了创造更可持续的城市，我们需要寻找机会，对城市区域进行管理，以保护生物多样性，并提供生态系统服务。在气候变化的背景下，这一点尤为紧迫，如果不采取更大的适应措施，将对城市居民产生严重的负面影响。然而，我们的能力，管理多功能的城市景观落后于我们的愿望，这样做，由于我们有限的了解景观结构，生物多样性和ES之间的关系，在管理相关的尺度。考虑到城市土地转换是全球变化中最不可逆转和增长最快的形式之一，我们需要研究考虑城市地区多种ES和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。我和我的学生将结合联合收割机的合成，观察和建模方法在3个组成项目，研究城市绿色空间和发展，生物多样性和ES在不断变化的气候模式之间的相互作用-使用蒙特利尔市作为一个焦点案例。我们的第一个目标是衡量生物多样性和城市绿色空间提供的多种气候相关服务之间的关联，形成我的新兴研究计划的基线。我们的第二个目标扩展这项工作，考虑跨空间尺度的景观结构对生物多样性和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驱动生物多样性和ES之间的权衡，并基于实地的研究，以评估私人管理影响生物多样性和ES提供的程度。我们的第三个目标集成了时间的角度来看，考虑到气候变化引起的生物多样性ES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和多样性对城市空气温度的影响，并制定方案来评估夏季热量的变化如何改变温带调节服务。提出的目标推进日益增长的城市景观生态学领域，并提高我们对生物多样性和ES在空间和时间上的关系的理解。根据我们的目标，以产生解决方案为导向的研究，这项工作也代表了一个重要的一步，发展生物多样性和ES指标使用的城市规划者，管理者和决策者在加拿大城市。这项研究涉及科学家，管理人员和公民之间的合作，为本科生和研究生学员提供先进的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.