"Reconciliation ecology" and urban rivers
Event details
| Date | 27.03.2012 |
| Hour | 16:15 |
| Speaker | Dr Rob Francis, Dept. of Geography, King's College London, UK |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The relationships between physical habitat heterogeneity/complexity and biodiversity are well established over a range of spatial scales, and across a spectrum of natural to artificial environmental contexts. It is perhaps within urban systems that ecological engineering of anthropogenic habitats has the greatest potential to improve degraded ecological quality, following the principles of ‘reconciliation ecology’. Urban rivers in particular are often heavily engineered and have suffered a substantial reduction in ecological quality. Because they may appear ecologically poor and offer relatively few opportunities for conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services, ecological investigations of such systems are rare. Usually, environmental research and improvements focus on water quality issues, while more detailed research on the habitats and biodiversity of such rivers is generally absent. Most rivers in heavily urbanised areas maintain flood defence walls and embankments as part of their engineering modifications, and which may superficially be considered to be ecologically hostile. However, work along the River Thames through central London has established that the flood defence walls of this highly engineered urban river may support relatively high plant diversity, with 90 species being found along surveyed sections of the wall in 2009. Other investigations have established that the wall plant assemblages and diversity are controlled via a mix of landscape and local factors, including river constriction, wash frequency, wall material type and wall physical complexity. Comparison of seeds transported through the system (the potential diversity) with those species found growing on the walls (expressed diversity) have highlighted that many more species (+50%) could establish on the walls if suitable habitat conditions were present. Consequently, the potential exists for substantial improvement of biodiversity on the walls, if habitat can be ecologically engineered following the principles of reconciliation ecology, whereby modifications ensure that societal use is not compromised by increased availability for nonhuman species. Such developments will require a close and ongoing collaboration between ecologists and engineers.
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Prof. Paolo Perona, AHEAD