Our research targets the discovery and development of multi-faceted solutions. Whether it’s through conservation, restoration or management, we are co-creating strategies to build the cities we want to live in. Cities that nurture both biodiversity and people, for a better urban experience for all.
We provide evidence for greening projects and policies that support climate change mitigation and adaptation, while conserving biodiversity and people’s access to nature. Our work is strongly grounded in ecology and wildlife biology, but we connect this traditional ecological knowledge to human wellbeing.
Biodiversity
We explore biodiversity, primarily birds and species at risk, the natural areas that support them and the novel risks they face in cities.
Ecosystem Services
A key value of nature in and around our homes are ecosystem services and the benefits they provide to local communities.
Urban green equity
Our work engages the social dimensions of cities to understand how we can build more equitable access to nature, for the benefit of all.
Our methods range from hands-on to theoretical. Techniques in our group include tagging and surveying birds, logging temperature, and measuring trees for carbon storage. We use advanced statistical models to explore and predict ecosystems and biodiversity within and across Canadian cities
Cities are often on the front lines of environmental change. This has created strong interest in finding urban greening strategies that benefit human communities and protect global biodiversity.
There is growing consensus that nature-based solutions, like the planting, restoration, and management of urban forests, can provide a variety of benefits to people, support biodiversity and ecosystem services in cities, and mitigate the effects of climate change. However, studies that integrate strategies for both climate and biodiversity conservation are rare. We are working on a systematic map to gather and describe information on two desired outcomes of urban forest management: (1) conserving avian diversity and species at risk, and (2) carbon storage and sequestration.
Our goal is to identify which urban forest management strategies have the capacity to promote multiple benefits for species conservation and climate mitigation, and thus represent promising nature-based solutions. We will also describe where tradeoffs exist, such that intended nature-based climate solutions may fall short for protecting biodiversity.
The resulting evidence base will support both management and funding decisions to ensure the effective use of resources for maximum benefits across people and ecosystems.
This work is being led by Kayleigh Hutt-Taylor - read more about our team here!
Synergistic efforts are required to address both biodiversity loss and climate change crises. Urban greenspaces can be important habitats for birds and even support some at-risk birds, yet we don’t know where bird biodiversity is concentrated in cities, which can hinder bird conservation efforts. We also don’t know if these biodiversity hotspots occur in the areas that best support carbon mitigation efforts. Mapping where biodiversity and carbon storage and sequestration hotspots overlap—or diverge—in cities can help urban land managers choose among sites for protection, restoration, or management.
We are looking at urban greenspaces across multiple Canadian cities from this nature-based solutions framework perspective, aiming to determine where bird biodiversity peaks and what areas best support carbon mitigation efforts. We also aim to determine how bird diversity differs between urban parks and public trees and how the differences between these two greenspace types influence these patterns.
This work is being led by Riikka Kinnunen - read more about our team here!
Throughout the world, migratory birds perform the incredible feat of migrating twice a year between the summer and winter habitats. In North America, the boreal forest and temperate forest of Canada are home to billions of birds each summer. To travel back and forth between their southern wintering grounds and northern breeding grounds, birds must face the gauntlet of a highly urbanized landscape across southern Canada and much of the United States. That means even Boreal or Arctic breeding birds that we associate with pristine wilderness must travel through cities or suburbs at least twice a year! In addition, research has shown that due to an innate attraction to light, migrating birds may disproportionally settle in natural greenspaces near or within urban areas.
We aim to better understand how long migratory birds spend in urban greenspaces, what they eat, where they go, and how can we better manage and conserve urban greenspaces as critical stepping stones during migration.
This work is being led by Barbara Frei & Ana Morales - read more about our team here!
Help us lay the groundwork for meaningful conservation partnerships with local decision-makers and organizations.
