浅论牯牛降国家级自然保护区生物多样性保护

本文介绍了牯牛降国家级自然保护区的概况,对保护区在保护管理中存在的问题、生物多样性面临的威胁及影响因素、社区居民与生物多样性保护的关系等进行了分析和探讨,提出了改进和提高保护区生物多样性保护管理的对策。     

城市植物多样性应用及其实现途径

城市植物多样性在生物多样性保护里是较为重要的组成部分,近年来,我国的城市生态环境和园林绿化建设在快速发展,但普遍存在景观单调、植物物种单一及忽略乡土植物等问题,其根本原因是植物多样性的应用已经明显不足。以地处华北地区的山东省滨州市植物园为例,分析我国城市植物多样性所面临的现状,提出解决方案。     

基于最小阻力模型的北京市延庆区自然保护区生态网络构建

延庆区作为北京市生物多样性最丰富的生态涵养区，面临着自然保护区分布分散与栖息地破碎化的问题，构建生态斑块与廊道组成生态网络是保护生物多样性的有效途径。以延庆区自然保护区为生态源地，通过最小阻力模型构建延庆区生态网络，旨在缓解生态斑块破碎化的问题，保障动物迁徙安全，保护和提高生物多样性。延庆区作为生态文明示范区，研究成果可为其在生物多样性保护层面提出具有引领性和可推广的有效措施。     

对于城市绿化建设中增加生物多样性问题的研究

对于现阶段我国城市绿化建设正处于如火如荼的环境之下,城市绿化建设已经成为我国城市生态环境建设的重要组成部分。对于城市绿化建设而言,如何快速实现城市绿化建设中生态保护和改善的目的,成为如今我国城市绿化建设首要思考的问题。而城市绿化建设中增加生物多样性这一方式,成为如今快速实现生态保护和改善的重要方式。本文重点介绍了如今我国城市进行绿化建设时,对于增加生物物种多样性的必要性,从而分析我国城市绿化建设中对于生物多样性保护的一些不确定和缺乏详细理解的问题,提出了一些能够正确增加生物多样性的方法和具体工作内容,使得整个城市绿化建设能够走向正确的道路,为城市生态环境改善起到应该具有的作用。     

园林建设与生物多样性保护

生物多样性是人类赖以生存和发展的多种生命资源的总汇。保护与发展生物多样性,对于人类的生存及社会经济的持续发展有着重大意义。在近代,由于人类活动的巨大干扰,天然生物资源日益减少,生物多样性面临极大威胁。当今,保护生物多样性的紧迫性已超过了历史上的任何时期。     

浅谈城市园林绿化中的生物多样性

城市园林绿化建设是城市生态环境建设的主体。保护和增加生物多样性是城市绿化建设的目的之一,也是提高其生态功能的主要手段。本文概述了城市绿化建设中保护和增加生物多样性的必要性,探索了生物多样性保护的有效途径。     

生物多样性保护的景观规划途径研究

生物多样性保护中的决定性环节是景观规划设计,对于景观规划途径,我们可以通过不同的保护哲学和生物多样性保护进行以下分类:第一类景观规划途径的核心是物种,第二类类景观规划途径的核心和出发点是景观元素。本文就生物多样性保护的景观规划途径进行研究,分别探讨以城市生物多样性保护和农业生物多样性保护的组成景观规划途径,借此,为今后景观生态安全格局的探索方向提供参考依据。     

四川德阳市区常见野生草本植物资源调查

城市中野生草本资源丰富,对城市生物多样性、生态系统健康与环境质量具有重要作用。通过调查和统计德阳市区野生草本植物,发现共有野生草本植物资源115种,根据植物的习性及市区规划特点,通过生物多样性、景观规划、工程3个方面的剖析,为德阳城市规划及设计过程中保护野生草本植物、提高城市植物多样性、保护城市生态系统提供参考。     

拥抱自然主义植物配置：提升现代园林中的生物多样性

通过探讨现代园林景观中生物多样性的保护与自然主义植物配置设计,揭示了生物多样性受到的威胁和挑战。通过选择本地和原生植物物种,营造适宜的生境和栖息地,促进植物与动物的相互作用等策略,可以提升现代园林中的生物多样性。这种拥抱自然主义植物配置的设计方式不仅有利于保护生物多样性,还能增加景观的美学价值和功能性。然而,在实践中仍面临一些挑战和限制,因此需要进一步改进植物配置策略,加强科学研究和合作,并提高公众意识,以实现更可持续和生物多样性友好的现代园林景观设计。     

海口城市农业景观营造探讨

海口城市化高度发展,唤醒人们对改善与保证城市生活质量基本问题的思考。根据海口城市农业景观营造是建设智慧型城市,创造宜居、可持续性的城市的需要,本文从传统城市文化景观保护、生物多样性保护、功能性生产的需要、环境教育需要、特色休闲农业发展和景观多元性发展等方面展开研究。     

西安城市区野生草本花卉现状调研

西安地区的野生植物十分丰富,其中分布在城市区的草本植物种类繁多,对城市的环境及生物多样性保护具有重要的价值,同时也是城市景观的组成部分。一些科属植物具有较高的观赏价值和生态改善的作用。以西安城市区的野生草本花卉为研究对象,调查其植物种类及分布特点、形态特征,并分析了它们在城市园林景观中的应用价值。     

Urban green spaces and sustainability: Exploring the ecosystem services and disservices of grassy lawns versus floral meadows

Urban green spaces provide important ecological, environmental, and cultural benefits, including biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing. However, a significant portion of urban green space is currently managed as highly manicured grassy lawns that provide limited ecosystem services. Managing urban green spaces as diverse meadows can have a multitude of ecosystem benefits such as biodiversity conservation, stormwater infiltration, and aesthetics. Relatively little is known about the range of ecosystem services or disservices in managing urban green spaces as lawns versus meadows. In this paper, we separately characterize three major categories of ecosystem services and disservices (provisioning, regulation and maintenance, and cultural) delivered by urban lawns and meadows while highlighting several trade-offs and synergies associated with urban lawn and meadow management strategies. Additionally, we suggest specific research priorities to better evaluate ecosystem services and disservices across these urban green spaces. Understanding ecological, environmental, and cultural trade-offs and synergies of managing different urban green spaces is key to maintaining multiple ecosystem services in urban environments.     

How can forest fragments support protected areas connectivity in an urban landscape in Brazil?

Cities continue to grow worldwide, and the highly modified urban landscape becomes an inhospitable environment for many species because the natural vegetation cover is commonly fragmented, and the remnants are often isolated. Protected Areas (PAs) located surrounding or within urban areas may not achieve their goal of protecting local or regional biodiversity. Thus, an urban ecological network is essential to support their PAs. Thus, this study aimed at assessing the PAs connectivity in an urban landscape in Brazil and understanding whether urban forest fragments can support an urban ecological network. Besides spatial models based on functional connectivity and graph theory, we used participatory techniques to design the resistance surface and the least-cost paths (LCPs) for Atlantic Forest birds. The results showed critical paths (LCPs), important areas for restoration programs for improving PAs connectivity, and essential forest fragments for conservation and restoration. Although the landscape has a forest structure with 1873 forest fragments and 516 links through which the LCPs were structured, most forest fragments and LCPs cannot provide the necessary support for the PAs connectivity. The current ecological network is dependent on forest fragments neighboring (outside PAs) and the flux dispersions occurred mainly in the peri-urban areas. Riparian zones and anthropic grasslands also showed importance for the PAs connectivity. We identified only 28 forest fragments spatially connected, presenting several sizes, and located near large forest areas, relevant PAs, and riparian zones. Six of these forest fragments, smaller than ten hectares and strategically located in the urban matrix, were indicated for restoration actions. The current low connectivity among PAs brings the importance of native vegetation restoration in the riparian zone and anthropic grassland and the importance of the periurban areas to promote biodiversity connectivity in the urban landscape.     

Fragmentation of China’s landscape by roads and urban areas

China’s major paved road-ways (national roads, provincial roads, and county roads), railways and urban development are rapidly expanding. A likely consequence of this fast-paced growth is landscape fragmentation and disruption of ecological flows. In order to provide ecological information to infrastructure planners and environmental managers for use in landscape conservation, land-division from development must be measured. We used the effective-mesh-size (M_eff) method to provide the first evaluation of the degree of landscape division in China, caused by paved roads, railways, and urban areas. Using M_eff, we found that fragmentation by major transportation systems and urban areas in China varied widely, from the least-impacted west to the most impacted south and east of China. Almost all eastern provinces and counties, especially areas near big cities, have high levels of fragmentation. Several eastern-Chinese provinces and biogeographic regions have among the most severe landscape fragmentation in the world, while others are comparable to the least-developed areas of Europe and California. Threatened plant hotspots and areas with high mammal species diversity occurred in both highly fragmented and less fragmented areas, though future road development threatens already moderately divided landscapes. To conserve threatened biodiversity and landscapes, we recommend that national and regional planners in China consider existing land division before making decisions about further road development and improvement.     

One size does not fit all: The complex relationship between biodiversity and psychological well-being

Conserving urban biodiversity is often promoted as a ‘win-win’ nature-based solution that can help align public health and biodiversity conservation agendas. Yet, research on the relationship between biodiversity and psychological well-being reveals inconsistent and complex results. This body of research is also restricted to a few socio-cultural and environmental contexts and tends to ignore differences in individual characteristics, such as nature relatedness (i.e., emotional affinity to nature) and ecological knowledge, that can influence people’s experience of biodiversity. The aim of this interdisciplinary research is to explore the relationships between biodiversity and psychological well-being, and test the moderating effect of nature relatedness and ecological knowledge on these relationships. An ecological survey was conducted in 24 small urban gardens in Israel to measure the richness and abundance of birds, butterflies and plants, as well as land cover characteristics. In parallel, a social survey (close-ended questionnaires) was conducted in-situ to measure psychological well-being, nature relatedness, ecological knowledge, perceived species richness and socio-demographic variables. Psychological well-being measures were mostly associated with the cover of woody species, perceived species richness, and to a lesser extent, with actual species richness and abundance, for all taxa. Nature relatedness moderated these relationships. Respondents with high nature relatedness demonstrated positive well-being-richness relationships, while those with intermediate, or low nature relatedness showed no, or even negative relationships, respectively. Opposite relationships were recorded for bird abundance. Overall, individuals demonstrated poor ecological knowledge and this variable moderated only few relations between well-being measures, perceived butterfly richness and bird abundance. Our results demonstrate that one-size-does-not-fit-all when considering the relationship between psychological well-being and biodiversity, and that affinity to nature is a key moderator for this relationship. Designing urban green spaces that provide inclusive and meaningful nature experiences and foster emotional affinity to nature, is therefore key to aligning ecological and social objectives for sustainable urban planning.     

Overview on urban nature conservation: situation in the western-grassland biome of South Africa

Urban nature conservation issues in South Africa are overshadowed by the goal to improve human well-being, which focuses on aspects such as poverty, equity, redistribution of wealth and wealth creation. The growing need for urban employment is closely associated with the increase of squatting and informal settlements along the urban fringe, which contributes to habitat fragmentation and sprawling of cities. This increasing urbanisation is one of the main threats to biodiversity in the Grassland biome as the natural vegetation in and around cities in the North-West Province of South Africa is destroyed at an alarming rate. The lack of detailed ecological data is a major problem in the implementation of conservation-orientated policies in urban planning and management. This paper gives a brief overview of urban nature conservation in the world, the obstacles to implementation in South Africa and the importance of socio-economics and environmental legislation. We focus specifically on projects involving phytosociological studies and biotope mapping in cities in the western Grassland Biome of the North West Province. The visible presence of native vegetation is essential and integral to urban nature conservation. There is a vital need to present urban environmental data in a format that is convincing and useful to decision makers. We propose an integrated approach towards urban ecological studies culminating in effective urban nature conservation.     

Modeling the optimal ecological security pattern for guiding the urban constructed land expansions

Rapid urbanization has induced numerous ecological and environmental issues seriously threatening the ecological security. The ecological security pattern (ESP), an effective way for protecting the ecological security, is becoming increasingly important in reconciling the rapid urbanization and ecology protection in urban planning practices. Based on the cost-distance analysis method, we constructed a three-rank (basic, moderate and strict-rank) composite ESP of Gaoming (Guangdong, China) aiming at protecting the survivals and habitat securities of rare vegetations, wild animals and human beings. The proposed composite ESP is established on five equal-weighted individual ESPs (namely Geology-ESP, Hydrology-ESP, Atmosphere-ESP, Biodiversity-ESP and Farmland-ESP) for geologic disasters prevention, flood prevention and drinking water protection, air pollution prevention, biodiversity conservation and farmland protection, respectively. Our results show that under the basic, moderate, and strict- rank ESPs, the integration and connectivity of the ecological components are constantly improved, but the connectivity between neighboring urban patches decline gradually. The moderate-rank ESP proves to be the optimal spatial pattern for balancing the conflicts between urban development and ecological protection. Notably, the ESP that considers the security of atmosphere and farmland securities, which protects the regional farmlands better and well balance the expansions of industrial and residual lands, proves to be much more reasonable.     

A methodological study of biotope mapping in nature conservation

This paper reviews biotope mapping methods in nature conservation and shows that the perspectives of biotope mapping have changed from protection of valuable biotopes for rare and endangered species to a modern nature conservation strategy, i.e. maintaining and increasing biodiversity as a component of human daily life. Two key issues of biotope mapping are highlighted: how to increase the chances of people having contact with urban biodiversity based on biotope mapping, and how to develop an effective method of biotope mapping in order to obtain much more urban biodiversity information. It is found that comprehensive surveys of all land parcels are important in urban biotope mapping, and especially investigation of small-scale biotopes close to people’s living places that still have potential biodiversity value. Many studies show that there is a close relation between vegetation structure and biodiversity. A modified biotope classification method integrated with structural variables is proposed for biotope mapping as a basis for urban biodiversity development.     

Taxonomic diversity,functional diversity and evolutionary uniqueness in bird communities of Beijing's urban parks: Effects of land use and vegetation structure

The importance of biodiversity conservation is well recognized, and the loss of biodiversity is particularly evident in highly urbanized areas. On the other hand, green spaces inside cities, as parks, can provide a resource for maintaining and increasing biodiversity, especially for bird species. However, only a few studies have addressed the effects of vegetation structure and land use composition on different components of biodiversity.Here, we explored the response of bird community composition to environmental differences related to land use composition and vegetation structure in green spaces in the city of Beijing, China. We compared the values of taxonomic diversity, functional diversity and community evolutionary distinctiveness in breeding bird communities, among ten urban parks of the world's third most populous city. Variation partitioning analysis and generalized linear mixed models were used to explore the unique and shared effects of land use composition and vegetation structure on each biodiversity metric.Park size was not associated with the diversity of bird communities in Beijing. Land use composition was the best predictor of change in bird community composition, followed by vegetation structure at ground level and the intersection between land use and vegetation structure at tree level. Water coverage increased bird species richness, while the presence of large trees increased both taxonomic diversity and bird functional richness in urban parks. Finally, the presence of patches of deciduous trees showed a positive effect on the average score of evolutionary distinctiveness of bird communities. In conclusion, we highlight that different elements of the environment are supporting different components of bird community diversity.     

Urban wilderness: Supply,demand, and access

The concept of urban wilderness feels like a paradox since natural and urban environments have long been viewed as antithetical. Today, however, wilderness is high on the urban agenda as a response to different challenges: biodiversity and human experiences of nature are being lost in increasingly dense cities, while at the same time a plethora of wild areas are developing in cities that are undergoing post-industrial transformation. Yet there is confusion around the definitions and the anticipated functions of urban wilderness and how humans can be incorporated therein. A unifying framework is proposed here that envisions urban wilderness as a social-ecological system; three major components are identified and linked: (i) the supply of wilderness areas along gradients of naturalness and ecological novelty, leading to a differentiation of ancient vs. novel wilderness, and the identification of wilderness components within cultural ecosystems; (ii) the demand for wilderness in urban societies, which differs among sociocultural groups as a function of underlying values and experiences; (iii) the access to urban wilderness, which can be improved both in terms of providing opportunities for encountering urban wilderness (e.g., by conserving, rewilding wilderness areas) and enhancing the orientation of urban people towards wilderness (e.g., through information, environmental education, citizen science). Evidence from urban wilderness projects in Europe demonstrates that multi-targeted approaches to conserving and managing existing novel urban ecosystems offer manifold opportunities to combine biodiversity conservation and wilderness experience in cities.