What places are the most biodiverse in cities?

A study by authors Salinitro et. al. looked at what environments in an Italian town harbored the most plant species. Published in the journal nature on Oct 11, 2018, the researchers found that landscapes that retained native soil became a refugium for native plants and increased biodiversity. Rooftops and manholes were cited as having the least diversity. Other factors such as paving types had varying biodiversity levels, as well as available moisture levels. This information is distributed via Creative Commons license available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Why are there so many spiders in this house?

A recent study published in Nature (November 2017) looked at where spiders live in houses. Entitled “The Habitats Humans Provide: Factors affecting the diversity and composition of arthropods in houses” authors Leong, Bertone, Savage, Bayless, Dunn & Trautwein found in their study that access to the outdoors and carpeted rooms had more spider populations than house tidiness, pesticide use, and pet ownership. "Our findings suggest that the more opportunities arthropods have to get into a particular room in a home, the more diverse the arthropods in that room are likely to be."

The absurdity of lawns according to MichaeL Pollan

“The conceit of the American suburb is that we’re all in a great park together.”- Michael Pollan
By Radiowest
See it at https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/569329/michael-pollan/?utm_source=eb

biosphere phone booth IV?

The Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL)

“The Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) re-imagines the conventional seed bank for a new epoch defined by massive human impact on the global environment. Rather than focusing exclusively on human utility or agricultural heritage, we champion the contributions of weedy plant species most likely to survive and thrive in an unpredictable future.

Stocked with seeds gathered from the vacant lots, street verges, superfund sites and abandoned infrastructure, the seed library provides a gene pool of tough, highly adaptable plants well-suited to live in close quarters with humans and their attendant landscape transformations.

Offering services like soil stabilization, moisture retention, heat island reversal, toxic bio-accumulation and medicinal and nutritional attributes, these plants are the ideal pioneer species, prepared to heal the wounds inflicted by a changing climate unsustainable resource extraction. Spontaneous urban plant communities will form the base of new, novel ecosystems as we move through the bottleneck of the sixth mass extinction. Dedicated to overcoming plant-blindness in contemporary urban life, NESL believes that reciprocal networks of plants and people can provide a solid foundation for building ecologically just communities.”

From http://nextepochseedlibrary.com/#/about/

The verdant ivy clings

”the verdant ivy clings around
Yon moss be-mantled wall
As if it sought to hide the stones
That crumbling soon may fall”
The ivy on the wall, Henry Kendall

Or must it fall? An article published in Nature (June 29, 2018) has found that ivy on limestone walls can actually protect walls from damaging frosts. Coombs, Viles, and Zhang found in their study that ivy provides thermal blanketing for 26-32% additional efficiency. Ivory tower research has found a way to protect itself.

City parks vs. natural areas - is it possible to preserve a natural level of bee richness and abundance in a city park?

“Urbanisation is an expansive process and a majority of insects live in human-modified areas. At the same time, a decrease in pollinator species richness and abundance has recently been observed in Europe, which in turn may have serious ecological and economic consequences. This study investigates the abundance, species richness and functional traits of wild bees in urban city parks in comparison to natural areas. The aim of this research was to assess the potential conservation values of urban green areas for bees. The present study demonstrates that a large and diversified city park may be a favourable habitat for bees, comparable to the natural fauna both in terms of the number and abundance of bee species. However, the study also showed that there were differences in the occurrence of species with different functional traits in the city parks investigated and in the natural landscape.”

Abstract taken from Banaszak-Cibicka, W., Twerd, L., Fliszkiewicz, M. et al. Urban Ecosyst (2018) 21: 599. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0756-8