The role of domestic gardens in the maintenance of biodiversity in urban areas: applying landscape principles

Docs en anglais | 27 pages | 21-09-2007 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

Nowadays, landscape ecology is not only used in natural areas but in urban too. Indeed, the social needs of an urban population which seems to be more dependent to green spaces, and also the awareness of the scientific community which tends to consider more the need of a certain amount of green spaces and thus of biodiversity in urban areas, leads towards a development of greenway planning all over the world.
More particularly, the gardens, which can be considered as ecological greenways if we put forwards the 3 different categories of greenways, tend to present potential significance for the maintainance of biodiversity, as they provide a substantial proportion of green space in urban areas.

To assess the role of the domestic gardens in the maintenance of biodiversity within urban areas, the ‘Biodiversity of Urban Garden in Sheffield' (BUGS) project provided good information about, first, the biodiversity state in domestic gardens. The general features of the gardens show that they provide good habitats such as a large number of ponds, nest boxes, trees, or compost heaps. All of these habitats hide an important biodiversity. In addition, a zoom on the plant diversity and also on the animal species richness, shows also how the gardens are important in the biodiversity within the urban area. Indeed, a total of 1166 plant species were recorded in the domestic garden of Sheffields and thus, as the animal species richness is of course strongly linked with the vegetation species richness, lot of different invertebrate species were also recorded.
Second, lot of different factors influence this biodiversity. These factors such as the garden size, the shape, the connectivity or even the age, are actually landscape ecology principles. They influence biodiversity at different levels. For instance the garden size will be very important notably through the relation edges species/interior species, while others, like the age of the garden, will be less significant.
Third, to enhance biodiversity, the methods are to add artificial habitats such as ponds or compost heaps, or to manipulate the landscape ecology principles.

Even if the main studies about the garden such as the BUGS project provide very useful information on garden biodiversity, it still remains that the privacy of the gardens is a real issue and does not make the results absolutely sure. Indeed it still remains a part of uncertainty since the garden owners are not always cooperating or doing as expected.
Finally, even if they provide much biodiversity in the urban area, it has been assessed a decrease of the average size of the garden area.

Content:

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

- The greenway movment
- What are Greenways?
- What about gardens?

METHOD

- Research methods
- How did I choose the subject?
- Main difficulties experimented

RESULTS

- Biodiversity assessment in urban domestic gardens
- Factor influencing the level of domestic garden biodiversity: landscape principles
- Manipulation of garden features and landcover to enhance biodiversity

DISCUSSION

- The garden privacy issue
- The garden area size tendency

Conclusion
References
Table of content

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