Sparing vs Sharing: The Great Debate Over How to Protect Nature

What is the best way to save nature – to cordon off areas for parks and open space or to integrate conservation measures on working lands? Recent research makes a case for each of these approaches and has reignited a long-standing debate among scientists and conservationists.

By Fred Pearce

Sparing vs Sharing: The Great Debate Over How to Protect Nature

A biologist believes that trees speak a language we can learn

Photo by Jeffrey L. Bruce

Written by
Ephrat Livni

 I’m in a redwood forest in Santa Cruz, California, taking dictation for the trees outside my cabin. They speak constantly, even if quietly, communicating above- and underground using sound, scents, signals, and vibes. They’re naturally networking, connected with everything that exists, including you.

Biologists, ecologists, foresters, and naturalists increasingly argue that trees speak, and that humans can learn to hear this language.

Many people struggle with this concept because they can’t perceive that trees are interconnected, argues biologist George David Haskell in his 2017 book The Songs of Trees. Connection in a network, Haskell says, necessitates communication and breeds languages; understanding that nature is a network is the first step in hearing trees talk.

For the average global citizen, living far from the forest, that probably seems abstract to the point of absurdity. Haskell points readers to the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador for practical guidance. To the Waorani people living there, nature’s networked character and the idea of communication among all living things seems obvious. In fact, the relationships between trees and other lifeforms are reflected in Waorani language.

In Waorani, things are described not only by their general type, but also by the other beings surrounding them. So, for example, any one ceibo tree isn’t a “ceibo tree” but is “the ivy-wrapped ceibo,” and another is “the mossy ceibo with black mushrooms.” In fact, anthropologists trying to classify and translate Waorani words into English struggle because, Haskell writes, “when pressed by interviewers, Waorani ‘could not bring themselves’ to give individual names for what Westerners call ‘tree species’ without describing ecological context such as the composition of the surrounding vegetation.”

Because they relate to the trees as live beings with intimate ties to surrounding people and other creatures, the Waorani aren’t alarmed by the notion that a tree might scream when cut, or surprised that harming a tree should cause trouble for humans. The lesson city-dwellers should take from the Waorani, Haskell says, is that “dogmas of separation fragment the community of life; they wall humans in a lonely room. We must ask the question: ‘can we find an ethic of full earthly belonging?’”

Haskell points out that throughout literary and musical history there are references to the songs of trees, and the way they speak: whispering pines, falling branches, crackling leaves, the steady hum buzzing through the forest. Human artists have always known on a fundamental level that trees talk, even if they don’t quite say they have a “language.”

Photo by Jeffrey L. Bruce

Redefining communication

Tree language is a totally obvious concept to ecologist Suzanne Simard, who has spent 30 years studying forests. In June 2016, she gave a Ted Talk (which now has nearly 2.5 million views), called “How Trees Talk to Each Other.”

Simard grew up in the forests of British Columbia in Canada, studied forestry, and worked in the logging industry. She felt conflicted about cutting down trees, and decided to return to school to study the science of tree communication. Now, Simard teaches ecology at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver and researches “below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate underground inter-tree communication and interaction,” she says. As she explained to her Ted Talk audience:

I want to change the way you think about forests. You see, underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence.

Trees exchange chemicals with fungus, and send seeds—essentially information packets—with wind, birds, bats, and other visitors for delivery around the world. Simard specializes in the underground relationships of trees. Her research shows that below the earth are vast networks of roots working with fungi to move water, carbon, and nutrients among trees of all species. These complex, symbiotic networks mimic human neural and social networks. They even have mother trees at various centers, managing information flow, and the interconnectedness helps a slew of live things fight disease and survive together.

Simard argues that this exchange is communication, albeit in a language alien to us. And there’s a lesson to be learned from how forests relate, she says. There’s a lot of cooperation, rather than just competition among and between species as was previously believed.

Peter Wohlleben came to a similar realization while working his job managing an ancient birch forest in Germany. He told the Guardian he started noticing trees had complex social lives after stumbling upon an old stump still living after about 500 years, with no leaves. “Every living being needs nutrition,” Wohlleben said. “The only explanation was that it was supported by the neighbor trees via the roots with a sugar solution. As a forester, I learned that trees are competitors that struggle against each other, for light, for space, and there I saw that it’s just [the opposite]. Trees are very interested in keeping every member of this community alive.” He believes that they, like humans, have family lives in addition to relationships with other species. The discovery led him to write a book, The Hidden Life of Trees.

By being aware of all living things’ inter-reliance, Simard argues, humans can be wiser about maintaining mother trees who pass on wisdom from one tree generation to the next. She believes it could lead to a more sustainable commercial-wood industry: in a forest, a mother tree is connected to hundreds of other trees, sending excess carbon through delicate networks to seeds below ground, ensuring much greater seedling survival rates.

Foreign language studies

Seedling survival is important to human beings because we need trees. “The contributions of forests to the well-being of humankind are extraordinarily vast and far-reaching,” according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 2016 report on world forests (pdf).

Forests are key to combating rural poverty, ensuring food security, providing livelihoods, supplying clean air and water, maintaining biodiversity, and mitigating climate change, the FAO says. The agency reports that progress is being made toward better worldwide forest conservation but more must be done, given the importance of forests to human survival.

Most scientists—and trees—would no doubt agree that conservation is key. Haskell believes that ecologically friendly policies would naturally become a priority for people if we’d recognize that trees are masters of connection and communication, managing complex networks that include us. He calls trees “biology’s philosophers,” dialoguing over the ages, and offering up a quiet wisdom. We should listen, the biologist says, because they know what they’re talking about. Haskell writes, “Because they are not mobile, to thrive they must know their particular locus on the Earth far better than any wandering animal.”

https://qz.com/1116991/a-biologist-believes-that-trees-speak-a-language-we-can-learn/

Green Roof Ecosystems

JBC is please to announce a great new technical resource for green roofs compiled by Richard Sutton. Here's the forward we wrote for the book:

Foreword

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” Let the knowledge, concepts and theories contained in this book be the acorn that inspires thousands of professionals to advance the technical performance of green roofs. For far too long, green roofs have been misunderstood and over simplified in terms of ecological performance. The challenges to creating diverse and resilient systems in our anthropogenic urban environments are well recognized. Due to weight, cost and loading restrictions, green roofs attempt to compress biological and ecological function into the narrowest of profiles, limiting natural processes and nutrient cycles.  In response to these constraints the industry has evolved to simplistic low diversity solutions which provide less ecological services than what is possible in the urban fabric of our cities where these benefits are in greatest need.

Today’s urban footprint is composed of more than twenty percent roof cover. This vast urban land cover provides an immense opportunity to solve many of our environmental concerns, especially if we convert these spaces to integrated and highly functioning living architecture. E. O. Wilson the noted American biologist and theorist stated: “We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity”. Furthermore, we should endeavor to create biodiversity on every surface of our cities, as it helps to fulfill the basic needs of humanity.

Despite the efforts of many within the green roof industry, roofs for the most part remain under-utilized, forgotten places with exceptional opportunities to be reclaimed and repurposed as vibrant, functional centers of nature and human enjoyment. As a green infrastructure tool, green roofs provide some of the highest quality eco-services benefits available for solving a multitude of social and environmental ills, despite the fact they are too quickly dismissed early in the design process because of a lack of understanding of their potential. Greater knowledge about Green Roof Ecosystems will only increase implementation of this vital and natural solution.

Recently a renewed interest in landscape planning seeks to link ecological services and community needs. And increasingly, public policy recognizes that creating livable and healthy communities requires connected landscapes in order to provide for clean air, clean water, public fitness, wildlife diversity and ecological benefits. The natural capital in our cities and efforts to restore it need not be considered at a single site or scale. Rather, natural ecology needs to be assessed and restored across scales. Widespread implementation of green roof technologies can set a foundation for mitigating and reversing environmental deterioration of the Anthropocene, as well as, dramatically broadening our response by providing new ways of thinking about ecological restoration. This process will be greatly enhanced by an interdisciplinary team approach to validate the robustness of the approaches underlying the restoration of ecosystem processes.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities established the Journal of Living Architecture in order to identify the state of the art in green roof and green wall research, to identify the best in class, and share these findings with as many professionals as possible.  This book represents a seminal compilation of research and technical knowledge about green roof ecology and how functional attributes can be enhanced. Written by over twenty leading experts and researchers in the field of green roofs, the narration covers in detail a number of important topics rarely discussed. While documenting current research, trends and theory, this book delves further to explore the next wave of evolution in green technology, defining potential paths for technological advancement and research.

This effort represents an informed and progressive way of approaching our environmental response to urban design.  It makes a compelling case that the long-term health and viability of our communities depend upon highly functioning green roof ecologies that connect green spaces to create a resilient tapestry of natural diversity spanning the urban landscape. Green Roof Ecosystems will be an invaluable reference for individuals who have the desire to implement ecologically conscious green roofs, such as planners, policy makers, agencies, and professionals who have substantial interest in designing them. (i.e.; landscape architects, ecologists, engineers, architects, biologists, and other holders of environmental knowledge). Ecological intelligence expands the context of life as it enlarges who we are as a person, and this book provides a wealth of intelligence for those interested in the topic of green roofs.

Jeffrey L. Bruce, FASLA, LEED, ASIC, GRP

Kansas City, MO

http://www.springer.com/it/book/9783319149820

Study Proves Organic Farming Boosts Biodiversity

Organic farms have around a third more species than conventionally-farmed ones, according to new research.

There's been lots of investigation of how different agricultural methods affect the diversity of life present on farms, but the results vary between studies and from place to place. So a group of scientists analysed 94 earlier studies, concluding that organic farming methods increased the number of species on average by 34 per cent - an effect that's been stable over three decades and shows no sign of diminishing.

But this is only true of farms in temperate climates. Until more research is done we won't know if we're increasing biodiversity at all by paying more for organic versions of products like bananas and chocolate that grow in warmer climates. 'Our study shows that organic farming can yield significant long-term benefits for biodiversity,' says Sean Tuck, a PhD student at the University of Oxford and lead author of the paper, which appears in Journal of Applied Ecology. 'Organic methods could go some way towards halting the continued loss of diversity in industrialised nations.'

Some organisms benefit more than others. Plants underwent the greatest increase, with the number of species present increasing by around 70 per cent. Pollinators came second, with half as many species again on organic farms, while birds, arthropods and microbes also did well. Organisms that decompose dead matter showed little effect, although this may be partly because they are comparatively little-studied.

The benefit to biodiversity seems to be greater in intensively-farmed regions, particularly on organic farms surrounded by arable land. So it could be that having a few organic farms scattered around the landscape could benefit the intensively-cultivated farms in between by providing islands of biodiversity to nurture valuable organisms like bees, which pollinate crops, and predators, which help keep pests under control.

But Tuck argues the situation is more complex. It's true that many of the organisms that find refuge on organic farms can benefit surrounding intensively-cultivated ones. But on the other hand, intensive farming methods may damage the biodiversity nurtured on the organic farm. For instance, if neighbouring farms receive large doses of pesticide, bees and other pollinators from the organic farm may be badly harmed as well. 'The effect goes both ways,' he says. 'It depends on the scale you are looking at - a single isolated organic farm is likely to see more species, but at the landscape level the overall impact is much less clear.'

The study's results apply only to species richness, or the number of species present; they don't tell us anything about how many individuals of each species there were. There aren't as many studies of this abundance as of species richness, so Tuck says including it in the analysis would have reduced the amount of evidence that could be used and weakened the study's conclusions.

The concept of intensive farming is itself more complex than it might seem. 'Some conventional farms will intensively spray pesticides and fertilisers whereas others will use mixed methods of crop rotation and organic fertilisers with minimal chemical pesticides,' says Dr Lindsay Turnbull, also of Oxford, the paper's senior author.

She adds that existing research has been biased towards temperate UK and European climates, and that more studies of the impact of organic farming in tropical, subtropical and Mediterranean climates are needed.

'There are also regional differences in farming practices, and the majority of the studies in our data were in developed nations with long histories of farming such as those in Western Europe,' she explains. 'There, some wildlife have thrived in extensively managed farmland but are threatened by agricultural intensification. However, in developing nations there is often great pressure on the land to provide enough food for local people, resulting in the conversion of natural habitat to farmland. In such cases the benefits of organic farming are less clear, as this may require more land to achieve the same yield as conventional farming.'

Organic products like bananas and chocolate that are grown in hot climates are often marketed as being better for the environment, but without more research we don't know if this is true. 'At present, we simply cannot say whether buying organic bananas or chocolate has a clear environmental benefit,' Turnbull says.

Land-use intensity and the effects of organic farming on biodiversity: a hierarchical meta-analysis. Sean L. Tuck, Camilla Winqvist, Flávia Mota, Johan Ahnström, Lindsay A. Turnbull, Janne Bengtsson, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12219

Botanists Gear up for Second Phase of Red List Project

Not so mighty: The IUCN Red List in July reported that a third of all conifers are under threat due to logging and disease.

Museum scientists are planning the next stage of a study to reveal the global destruction of plant life. It is the second phase of a collaborative project between the Museum, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which began in 2005. The information from the study feeds into the Red List Index, an online barometer of animals, plants, insects and fish at risk of extinction, produced twice-yearly by the IUCN.

The first phase, completed in 2010, was a desk-based analysis of some of the six million plant specimens in the Museum's herbarium collection and the seven million at Kew to monitor the status of the world's plants.

The specimens have been collected over hundreds of years by thousands of botanists, including Charles Darwin, and are preserved for study in the collections. They provide data to show where certain plants have been living in the past.

Darwin meets Google Earth

The team then used satellite imagery, including from Google Earth, to compare the historic data with what can be seen living on the ground and used to illustrate which habitats have been reduced or destroyed altogether. Assessments of different areas then allowed them to create a map of hotspots of plant diversity and threatened species.

The researchers concluded in 2010 that more than 20 per cent of the world's plants, or one in five, are threatened with extinction, with a further 10 per cent classified as near threatened.

Truth on the Ground

The second phase of the project, for which funds are being sought, involves going out into the field, or ground-truthing, to measure the desktop assessment with the situation on the ground, to plot decline and target certain areas for conservation. Some plants on the Red List haven't been seen for 150 years.

Other species have never been seen on the ground and are only known from the scientific paper where they are first described. There have even been cases of plants newly discovered in a collection that have already gone extinct in the wild.

Loss of Habitat

The overwhelming threat to natural habitat is anthropogenic (caused by human activity), through habitat conversion to agriculture, for development or mining, or through the introduction of invasive species.

'A good example of this is the volcanic island of St Helena in the south Atlantic, where several species of a shrub, Trochetiopsis, were indigenous', said Museum botanist Neil Brummitt, who has worked on the project from the beginning.

'Local deforestation for fuel and ship-building, as well as for agriculture, disturbed the habitat, which was then put under further pressure by the introduction of goats by the Royal Navy to feed sailors stationed on the island. The goats fed on the endemic species, causing havoc to the island's ecosystem. '

Biodiversity Jigsaw

The latest Red List, published last month, assessed 71,576 species of animals, plants, insects and fish and reported that 21,286 are under threat.

'If you can't preserve everything, it becomes a value judgement deciding what to preserve,' Brummitt said. 'We're losing a large proportion of the world's biodiversity without knowing what the knock-on effect will be on other species, such as birds and insects. We're losing pieces of a biodiversity puzzle.'

Eighty per cent of calories consumed by people around the world come from just 12 species of plants.

'Plants provide the foundation for the entire world's ecosystems,' Brummitt said. 'Biodiversity is important because it's essential not to rely on a handful of species to provide the ecosystem services most developed countries still depend on, for food, shelter and clean water.'

Bees Hop Between Green Roofs

Green roofs aren’t just isolated islands of nature. They’re also stepping stones for flying insects such as bees, scientists have found.

While it’s clear that green roofs can boost biodiversity in cities, scientists didn’t know whether these patches could act as connected habitat. So a team studied 40 green roofs in Zurich, Switzerland, with plants ranging from succulents to meadow species. From May to September 2010, the researchers caught 48,084 ground beetles, spiders, weevils, and bees from nearly 500 species on the green roofs and at corresponding green spaces on the ground.

The team then looked for links between the arthropod communities and factors such as the size of the roof, the amount of flowers, and distance to the nearest green roof or other habitat. For ground beetles and spiders, the local environment had a big influence on the species present. But for flying bugs such as bees and weevils, “connectivity was by far the most important variable,” the authors write in Ecology.

These roof-hopping insects may help pollinate plants, the team notes. And connected populations are more likely to bounce back from disturbances.

Source: Braaker, S. et al. 2013. Habitat connectivity shapes urban arthropod communities: The key role of green roofs. Ecology doi: 10.1890/13-0705.1.

http://conservationmagazine.org/2013/09/bees-hop-between-green-roofs/

Biophilic Cities: What Are They?

Central Park in New York City, a world landmark of biophilia and nature preservation.   Biophilia is a term popularized by Harvard University myrmecologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson to describe the extent to which humans are hard-wired to need connection with nature and other forms of life. More specifically, Wilson describes it this way: “Biophilia…is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. Innate means hereditary and hence part of ultimate human nature.” (Wilson, 1993, p.31). To Wilson biophia is really a “complex of learning rules” developed over thousands of years of evolution and human-environment interaction.

Evidence of the emotional and psychological benefits of nature is mounting and impressive (research shows its ability to reduce stress, to aid recovery from illness, to enhance cognitive skills and academic performance, to aid in moderating the effects of ADHD, autism and other child illnesses). Recent research suggests even that we are more generous in the presence of nature; all these values are in addition to the immense economic value of the ecological services provided by natural systems. Support for the practice of biophilic design has been growing and there are now many exemplary examples of buildings that seek to integrate natural features and qualities. We recognize the need for biophilic workplaces, for healing gardens and spaces in hospitals, and for homes and apartments that provide abundant daylight, natural ventilation, plants and greenery. Less attention, however, has been focused on the city or urban scale, despite the fact that the planet continues an inexorable trend in the direction of urbanization. Urban residents need nature more than ever, and much work is needed to find creative and effective means for incorporating it into urban environments. It is likely that the benefits of close contact with nature are deeper and even more profound, and the potential to make a difference by integrating nature directly into our lives, even greater than we realize. Nature ought not to be an afterthought, and ought not to only be viewed in terms of the (considerable to be sure) functional benefits typically provided (benefits of trees, green rooftops, wetlands for managing stormwater, for mediating air and water pollutants, for addressing urban heat island effects, and so on). The elements of a deeper concept of integrating nature into everyday living include a recognition of some of the following:

Important Ties to Place. There are considerable place-strengthening benefits and place-commitments that derive from knowledge of local nature; from direct personal contact; enhanced knowledge, and deeper connections = greater stewardship, and willingness to take personal actions on behalf of place and home; Connections and Connectedness. Caring for place and environment, essential for human wellbeing and in turn essential ingredient in caring for each other; A Need for Wonder and Awe in Our Lives. Nature has the potential to amaze us, stimulate us, propel us forward to want to learn more and understand more fully our world; Nature adds a kind of wonder value to our lives unlike almost anything else; Meaningful Lives Require Nature. The qualities of wonder and fascination, the ability to nurture deep personal connection and involvement, visceral engagement in something larger than and outside oneself, offer the potential for meaning in life few other things can provide;

Urbanists and city planners have special opportunities and unique obligations to advance biophilic city design, utilizing a variety of strategies and tools, applied on a number of geographical and governmental scales. The agenda is one that must extend beyond conventional urban parks, and beyond building-centric green design. It is about redefining the very essence of cities as places of wild and restorative nature, from rooftops to roadways to riverfronts. It is about understanding cities as places that already harbor much nature and places that can become, through bold vision and persistent practice, even greener and richer in the nature they contain.   What a biophilic city is or could be is an open question, and it is hoped that this website will help to stimulate discussion of this. As a tentative starting point I offer some of the following as key qualities of biophilic cities:           Biophilic cities are cities of abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites; biophilic cities are biodiverse cities, that value, protect and actively restore this biodiversity; biophilic cities are green and growing cities, organic and natureful; In biophilic cities, residents feel a deep affinity with the unique flora, fauna and fungi found there, and with the climate, topography, and other special qualities of place and environment that serve to define the urban home; In biophilic cities citizens can easily recognize common species of trees, flowers, insects and birds (and in turn care deeply about them); Biophilic cities are cities that provide abundant opportunities to be outside and to enjoy nature through strolling, hiking, bicycling, exploring; biophilic cities nudge us to spend more time amongst the trees, birds and sunlight. Biophilic cities are rich multisensory environments, the where the sounds of nature (and other sensory experiences) are as appreciated as much as the visual or ocular experience; biophilic cities celebrate natural forms, shapes, and materials; Biophilic cities place importance on education about nature and biodiversity, and on providing many and varied opportunities to learn about and directly experience nature; In biophilic cities there are many opportunities to join with others in learning about, enjoying, deeply connecting with, and helping to steward over nature, whether though a nature club, organized hikes, camping in city parks, or volunteering for nature restoration projects. Biophilic cities invest in the social and physical infrastructure that helps to bring urbanites in closer connection and understanding of nature, whether through natural history museums, wildlife centers, school-based nature initiatives, or parks and recreation programs and projects, among many others; Biophilic cities are globally responsible cities that recognize the importance of actions to limit the impact of resource use on nature and biodiversity beyond their urban borders; biophilic cities take steps to actively support the conservation global nature; These are but a few of the ways a city might be seen as biophilic. What do you think? Are there other ways, and other important qualities or dimensions not listed above? http://biophiliccities.org/biophiliccities.html

Rich Biodiversity Can Exist in Cities

Biodiversity Hotspots The biodiversity hotspots hold especially high numbers of endemic species, yet their combined area of remaining habitat covers only 2.3 percent of the Earth's land surface. Each hotspot faces extreme threats and has already lost at least 70 percent of its original natural vegetation. Over 50 percent of the world's plant species and 42 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species are endemic to the 34 biodiversity hotspots.

With proper planning and management, cities can retain substantial components of native biodiversity
  
Despite what is often commonly believed, fact is that many cities have high species richness. Several are even located within globally recognized "biodiversity hotspots"—areas with exceptionally high biodiversity (at least 1,500 endemic plant species) that have lost at least 70% of their original habitat area.

Some notable examples of cities with rich biodiversity are found on nearly all continents and latitudes - Berlin, Chicago, Curitiba, Kolkata, Mexico City, Montreal, Nagoya, New York City, São Paulo, and Singapore, to name but a few.

Many cities also contain protected areas within or just outside their borders that provide important contributions to biodiversity. In Cape Town, Table Mountain National Park, an iconic landmark extraordinarily rich in endemic plants and animals, is entirely surrounded by the municipality. In Mumbai, Sanjay Gandhi National Park—known for its dense semi-evergreen forests, 280-plus species of birds, 150 species of butterflies, and 40 species of mammals, including a small population of leopards—protects 104 square kilometers entirely within a megacity. In Stockholm, the National Urban Park comprises 2,700 hectares with high biodiversity, right in the city center.

 Global Species Richness Centers of richness for mammals, amphibians and birds listed with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Connecting fragmented ecosystems is also likely to increase ecological functionality as a whole and therefore to maximize the ecosystem services offered. There are diverse and innovative ways to connect natural ecosystems. Planting trees with overarching canopies can help small mammals, birds, and insects cross roads and highways. Roadside planting that mimics the multilayering of forests—for example, composite of tall trees, medium-sized trees, shrubs, and understory vegetation—can cater to a diversity of animal users. Ecolinks such as underground tunnels and vegetated overhead bridges can help connect natural areas. All of these efforts can complement the important roles played by protected areas in cities.

Many tools exist to help cities manage their biodiversity. One such tool is the City Biodiversity Index (or CBI, also known as the Singapore Index). This and many other initiatives can help cities conserve and manage their biodiversity.

AICHI TARGET 5: By 2020, the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced.

Cities can help preserve forests and wetlands of critical biodiversity by ensuring the connectivity of existing and future protected areas. Managing footprints (best done at the provincial, state, or regional level) can also make a difference.

AICHI TARGET 12: By 2020 the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained.
Campaigns by scientific institutions, zoos, museums, and aquaria— where city and regional authorities often have a managing interest—can raise critical attention and funds and provide technical assistance for the conservation of threatened species, even across the globe.
 

 World Protected Areas Protected areas or natural parks are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological and/or cultural values.

Cape Town
  
With a population of just under 3.7 million people and a land area of 2,500 square kilometers (0.2 percent of South Africa's total land area), Cape Town supports 50 percent of South Africa's critically endangered vegetation types and about 3,000 indigenous vascular plant species. Cape Town falls within the globally recognized biodiversity hotspot known as the Cape Floristic Region; of the 18 vegetation types in the city, 11 are critically endangered and 3 are endangered. Although this statistic in part reflects severe land-use pressure, it also disproves the common assumption that cities cannot have high levels of biodiversity. What's more, many of the plant species found in metropolitan Cape Town are endemic—found nowhere else on Earth.

São Paulo
  
São Paulo, Brazil, is the most populous city in the Southern Hemisphere and the third largest city in the world, with more than 11 million inhabitants. This megacity contains biodiversity from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest, a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot. Twenty-one percent of the city is covered by dense forest in various stages of ecological succession, but these remnants are under severe threat from the unrestrained occupation of both low-income housing and luxury condominiums. An impressive 1,909 plant species and 435 animal species have been recorded in the city, with 73 of the animal species endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. The city's Green Belt Biosphere Reserve, part of UNESCO's Mata Atlantic Biosphere Reserve, protects remnants of this rainforest as well as associated ecosystems.

City Biodiversity Index
 
The City Biodiversity Index, or CBI, also known as the Singapore Index on Cities' Biodiversity, is a self-assessment tool that encourages cities to monitor and evaluate their progress in conserving and enhancing biodiversity. More than 50 cities around the world are in various stages of testing the CBI and providing data for it. It currently comprises 23 indicators in three components: native biodiversity, ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, and governance and management of biodiversity. Stakeholders such as universities and civil society can assist in providing data. A platform for cities to share their experiences in applying the index has been particularly useful to cities considering using the CBI.

Other applications for the CBI have also surfaced. For example, information from it can be used in the decision-making and master planning of cities; it can assist policy- and decision-makers in allocating resources and prioritizing projects; good practices can be made into case studies for sustainable development; and some of the indicators can form the basis for calculating the economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The CBI is also a useful public communication tool for city authorities. With ongoing refinement and improvement, it is continually becoming more valuable.

Singapore
 
By virtue of its geographical location, Singapore has a rich natural heritage. More than 10 ecosystems are found in this highly urbanized city— state of 5 million people. Although much of its biodiversity disappeared during the British colonization, Singapore still has a wealth of flora and fauna. Among the native species recorded are 2,145 vascular plants, 52 mammals, 364 birds, 301 butterflies, 127 dragonflies, 103 reptiles, 400 spiders, 66 freshwater fishes, and 255 hard corals. Between 2000 and 2010, intensive surveys found more than 500 species of plants and animals new to Singapore, of which more than 100 were new to science. Nestled in the heart of Singapore and not more than 15 kilometers from the busiest shopping areas are the Central Catchment Nature Reserve and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. A network of parks and park connectors permeate the island, allowing easy access to varied habitats rich in plant and animal life.

http://cbobook.org/key-messages-2.php?r=1&width=1440&utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=

Green Fades to Blue: Would You Rather Sustain or be Restored?

Mention restoration and most minds go to some historical building project. I subscribe to a much broader definition that encompasses the ability of a building to generate a positive effect. Beyond green design, which at best seeks neutrality, and at worst comes with practically a whole religion’s worth of moral baggage, restorative design, including “blue” principles, seeks to replenish us in body, mind and spirit. William McDonough has written about the power of architecture to be restorative and at the 2008 Sustainable Brands International Conference, Bob Isherwood introduced the term Blue design, to reflect the need for strategic and innovative solutions that give something back. In other words, it’s not enough to have the cache of being sustainable. To really impact people’s lives, we have to show them what’s in it for them- we need to provide restoration.

Think about the buildings in which we live, work and play: How do these environments contribute to the stress in our lives? How do they cost us too much money to maintain while giving us largely inadequate shelter and support to live our lives? How often might they actually be harmful to our well being through contaminants in the air or water, noise or light pollution? 

Blue as an Expansive Approach

 Many early adopters of the term Blue Design or the phrase “green to blue” focus on the power of design to give something back to the community by having a net positive effect on air quality and energy (in the meantime, we have been hard pressed to even design net-zero, or energy neutral buildings). This narrow definition of blue loses sight of a much larger goal that we should be striving for in our built environment, the ability to be restorative, even therapeutic. While contaminants in that environment can contribute to a lack of focus and well being, cultural impacts are far greater. We inhabit a world of sensory overload. We lead isolated and independent lives in the processed, overproduced stage set of life. Depleting days feature streaming information in the form of constant interruptions and demands on our attention. The resulting level of stress that we experience impacts our ability to focus our attention, creating a state of persistent mental fatigue that impairs our quality of life. The antidote: a restorative environment.

Building for the Senses

It’s unlikely that life in the information age is going to change anytime soon, or that its cultural impacts are necessarily negative. They just feel that way because there is such disconnect between our lifestyles and the spaces in which we live. The industrial age city and post-industrial sprawl has created both interior and exterior spaces that exacerbate our state of depletion. Our built world needs an overhaul.

Architecture, landscape and urban design elements can recharge our direct attention capabilities and restore balance and wellness in our lives if our designs reconnect users with nature and other living things through biophilic design strategies. Work towards solutions that encourage interaction and that provide relief from unwanted or irrelevant stimuli. While specific design strategies will arise from specific design problems, you should approach every project with the goal of restoration in mind. Some characteristics of restorative environmental design as defined by Stephen Kellert in his book Linkages: Understanding and Designing Connections between the Natural and Human Built Environments include:

Human Built Environments include:

1. Prospect- the vista
2. Refuge- the safe place
3. Water-actual water or design elements that provide glimmer, movement or symbolic images representing water
4. Biodiversity- a rich palette of natural materials supplied through both interactive spaces (gardens, planters) and views.
5. Sensory Variability- response to the changing times of day and seasons
6. Biomimicry-natural materials, natural forms and structures
7. Sense of playfulness-things that delight, surprise and amuse
8. Enticement-complexity that encourages exploration

When was the last time a building brought you joy? What if every building could?

http://thepatronsaintofarchitecture.blogspot.com/2011/02/green-fades-to-blue-would-you-rather.html

Condition of Vegetative Roofs Years After They're Exposed to the Real World.

In KieranTimberlake's extensive survey of roof gardens, it identified species that were planned, had thrived, or were rogue (l to r, respectively): prairie dropseed (Sporobulis heterolepsis); two-row stonecrop (Sedum spurium fuldaglut); moss pink, pink phlox (Phlox subulata) Credit: Bruce Peterson

It’s one thing to Photoshop a green roof into a rendering; it’s another thing to plant and sustain one. And it’s all but unheard of to go back and analyze the state of these living roofs years after their completion, as Philadelphia-based Kieran Timberlake did for its groundbreaking Green Roof Vegetation Study. The study responds to “a lack of long-term data on real buildings with diverse and dynamic plant communities,” according to the firm. Instead of concentrating on one engineering or horticultural aspect of green roofs, the firm looked at “how green roofs function as ecosystems and how they change over time.”

The jury highlighted two innovative aspects of the study: its comparative method and its ecological thesis. In 2011 and 2012, Kieran Timberlake surveyed six of its completed green roofs, ranging in area from 1,744 to 10,000 square feet, and designed between 2003 and 2011. Using the Relevé vegetation survey method and the Braun-Blanquet abundance scale to quantify its findings, Kieran Timberlake assessed the roofs’ vegetative cover, species richness, and species diversity in 2-meter-square sections. The researchers also interviewed facilities and grounds maintenance personnel at each site. Juror Bill Zahner praised the study’s “way of collecting the data needed rather than saying, ‘Well, let’s just put seeds down and keep our fingers crossed.’ ” Juror Jing Liu agreed: “What they’re doing is different. The research is to study the long-term dynamics of green roofs.”

The resulting report confirms that roof ecologies are indeed dynamic and that changes will occur spatially and over time from the original planting design. More importantly, it details the nature of those changes, and raises questions about what the changes might indicate for long-term resiliency. In many of the case studies, the prevalent species observed on the roofs in 2012 that were part of the initial planting design were accompanied by dozens of new or “emergent” species. Artemisia (commonly known as mugwort) at the Yale Sculpture Building and Melilotus (or sweet clover) at Cornell University’s Alice H. Cook House independently found their way to roof tops, took root, and eventually made themselves at home in the roofscape design. Roof biodiversity often increased, although the report cautions that the results of any single survey could be deceptive: “What appears to be major shifts in species composition may in fact be short-term fluctuations or cycles caused by unpredictable changes in experienced climate and environmental conditions.”

While the report rigorously maps the distance between design intent and material outcomes, it also sets the stage for even more radical research to be conducted on the interplay between landscape and architecture. Kieran Timberlake envisions deploying sensors on the roof to measure thermal and moisture conditions in relation to the building’s internal climate and energy consumption. The report also suggests that architecture “is responsible for the … vegetative dynamics and ultimate performance of the roof.” On the roof of a dining hall at Middlebury College, for example, the otherwise feeble grasses and forbs become lush and verdant around the skylight cones, whose shade presumably helps the soil retain moisture. “Architectural design creates microclimates across a roof, determining availability of sunlight, water, and nutrients,” the report states.

Kieran Timberlake is already putting its newfound knowledge to use on the forthcoming Penn State Center for Building Energy Education and Innovation at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which itself will serve as an ongoing laboratory and teaching center for scientists, students, and professionals interested in eco-effective architecture. The firm has developed a proposal to create a green roof test bed on this building; currently, it is in the process of raising funds.

But documenting the consequences of a designed green roof subjected to unforeseeable or uncontrollable environmental forces has wider implications for architecture in general, juror Jing Liu said. “If you think of the green roof as an ecological system, you can have architecture as an ecological system,” she said.

In the messiness of the real world, architecture depends on dynamic variables. Buildings are never really complete. Rather, they are subject to the vicissitudes of client maintenance regimes, the inconsistencies of occupant behavior, and the unpredictability of weather. That is why post-occupancy studies—of both indoor and outdoor environments—must be as meticulous as they are fearless.

Project Credits 
Project Green Roof Vegetation Study 
Design Firm KieranTimberlake, Philadelphia 
Project Team Roderick Bates, Stephanie Carlisle, Billie Faircloth, AIA, Stephen Kieran, FAIA, Taylor Medlin, Assoc. AIA, Max Piana, James Timberlake, FAIA, Ryan Welch

 

 In 2005, when Kieran Timberlake planned the green roof of Cornell University’s Carl L. Becker House, in Ithaca, N.Y., the rigorous planting plan comprised three types of succulents (two-row stonecrop, tasteless stonecrop, and houseleeks), combined with strips of prairie dropseed. When Kieran Timberlake surveyed the roof in 2012, the vegetation was healthy and full, but there were a few surprises—54 of them, in fact. That is the number of new plant species that had taken root over the years.

An aerial view of Cornell campus dormitories shows Kieran Timberlake's green roofs outlined in white; the Carl L. Becker House is at the right side of this image. Credit: Kieran Timberlake

According to KieranTimberlake's study, the most biodiversity was found in the Becker House's southernmost bay, where shading along the adjacent building edge minimized the effects of record droughts.

 

Various poplar species were found on the Becker House roof, despite not appearing in the original roof planting plan.

Credit: Kieran Timberlake

http://www.architectmagazine.com/green-building/green-roof-vegetation-study.aspx



Daylighting Takes Off as Cities Expose Long-Buried Rivers

There's likely an underground stream in your city, but it may soon be seeing the light.

Uncovering buried streams has had huge impacts in places as diverse as Seattle, Washington, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and even Seoul, Korea—improving local water quality, providing habitat for fish and birds, and turning neglected parking lots and roads into public parks that boost neighbors' property values and can revitalize entire cities. And city planners everywhere are starting to take note.

In Yonkers, the fourth largest city in New York State, officials are a third done with a "daylighting" project—a term for the opening up of underground streams (see "11 Rivers Forced Underground"). In addition to exposing a waterway that had long been covered, the effort has already sparked plans for a new minor-league ballpark and new housing.

"I credit the city and the people who ... figured that having a nice river in a downtown was something that was, economically, really good," said Ann-Marie Mitroff, director of river programs for Groundwork Hudson Valley, an environmental justice nonprofit.

But why are all these streams covered at all? Flash back more than a hundred years. In many urban areas around the world, small streams were just getting in the way. You couldn't build on top of them, and the rapidly growing populations in many cities were throwing all their sewage into open water.

Often, engineers found that the simplest solution was to bury the streams, routing the water into pipes and paving over the top. In Yonkers, "the Army Corps of Engineers put a parking lot on top of it, which everybody thought was progress," Mitroff said. [Editor's note: A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says there are no records of the agency covering streams in Yonkers, and said the Corps would not have had jurisdiction to do so. They pointed to local authorities as most likely responsible; National Geographic has been unable to confirm that.]

In some cities, more than 70 percent of streams have been paved over. In many cases, city residents don't even know that there are buried waterways under their feet.

Now, new research and a desire to revitalize urban cores is leading to a host of daylighting projects. Uncovering buried streams has been proposed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and Detroit, as well as in smaller urban areas nationwide.

Uncovering streams can help reduce flooding. When it rains in a "natural" watershed, soil and plants absorb the water. When it rains onto a parking lot that drains into an underground pipe, the potential for flooding is much larger.

According to a new report from advocacy nonprofit American Rivers, released July 17, urbanization increases the likelihood of floods getting worse. One study found that paving over 25 percent of a watershed could turn a formerly rare severe flood into a twice-a-decade event. When more than 65 percent of a watershed is paved over, those so-called "hundred-year-floods" could hit every year.

Watch the Money Flow

Early daylighting projects, like Arcadia Creek in Kalamazoo, focused on the economic benefits of bringing streams back to the surface. Turning a parking lot into a 3/4-mile-long (1.2-kilometer-long) strip of Arcadia Creek in downtown Kalamazoo created a park that hosts five annual festivals and generates $12 million in annual tourism dollars.

But Arcadia Creek isn't really a creek. According to a report from the Virginia Tech Water Resources Research Center, the Arcadia Creek project and similar ones do "not resemble streams per se, but rather canals with surrounding parkland ... [the streams] are very controlled water channels [with] concrete-lined basins."

In Seoul, a $384 million project daylighted three miles (five kilometers) of stream that has most of its water pumped in from a river seven miles (11 kilometers) away. Both parks have been successful in boosting the economic value of the surrounding land and bringing locals a little closer to nature.

Digging up a stream isn't cheap. In Hutchinson, a town in rural Kansas, daylighting just three city blocks of Cow Creek cost more than $4 million, including relocating four buildings out of the new floodplain. But compared to the cost of unearthing, replacing, and reburying the city's aging pipes, building a new downtown park was an easy choice.

Not all daylighting projects need to be the centerpiece of an urban revitalization project. In Washington, D.C., the District Department of the Environment (DDOE) is undertaking small daylighting projects of a few hundred feet (around a hundred meters) in upper Northwest D.C., which is more suburban than urban, despite its location within the nation's capital.

Each project will create a small amenity for immediate neighbors, but they are mostly intended to mitigate local flooding and improve water quality. "Water in a pipe is not exposed to biological processes that break down pollution," said Steve Saari, watershed protection specialist with DDOE.

A recent EPA study found that streams exposed to sunlight are up to 23 times more efficient at processing nitrogen, which left unprocessed can cause dead zones where fish cannot survive.

Return of a "Living Stream"

In Yonkers, the uncovered stream is "a living stream," Mitroff says. The first reopened part of the stream (which opened in 2012) is already filled with fish and "fairly good-size" American eels, up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) long. "It's remarkable," Mitroff said.

In D.C., only months after daylighting a tributary to Rock Creek, "we've seen a lot more birds, and a lot more unusual birds," said Saari. And, he added, "we had frogs. It was incredible."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130730-daylighting-exposing-underground-rivers-water-urban-renewal/

The Ecozoic City

 By John Thackara

Authors Note: For an exhibition that has opened in The Hague called Yes Naturally I was asked to contribute a text for the book about what nature might mean for cities, and vice versa, in the near future. Here is an extract. 

The writer Thomas Berry described the ecozoic as the “reintegration of human endeavours into a larger ecological consciousness”. The ecozoic, Berry believed, would supplant the Anthropocene age, that we live in now, in which human needs take precedence over the health of the earth’s forests, oceans, and other living systems. Our species will only begin to make true progress, Berry believed, when we learn to cherish the vitality of all life-forms equally — not just our own.

Berry’s ideas could be dismissed as charming, but implausible — were it not for many small signs that just such a cultural shift may be brewing underneath the shiny surface of business as usual.

Over the ages we’ve invested huge amounts of effort and energy to keep cities and nature separate. The intensity of that effort was obscured until, in 1971, a geologist called Earl Cook developed a technique to measure the energy ‘captured from the environment’ in a modern city. A hunter-gatherer 10,000 years earlier, Cook reckoned, got by on 5,000 kilocalories a day. A New Yorker or Londoner today, by contrast, needs about 300,000 kilocalories a day once all the systems, networks and gadgets of modern life are factored in. That’s a difference in energy needed for survival, between lives that were part of nature, and lives lived apart, of60 times — and rising.

Paving over the soil, and filling our lives with media, obscured our interdependency with living systems for a centuries. Now, as awareness of energy precarity grows, so do nagging questions about the ways we think about, and inhabit, our cities: How much energy does that skyscraper use each day? what level of resources are embedded in that flyover? What was it like here, before we paved it over?

In 2009, the Mannahatta exhibit began to answer that last question. It exposed New Yorkers to Manhattan’s ecosystem in 1609 — just before the first settlers arrived. Today’s city of asphalt and skyscrapers, it turned out, was once a diverse and life-filled landscape. Times Square was once a forest. Harlem was a meadow. A landscape of forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, springs, ponds and streams was home to bears, wolves, songbirds, and salamanders. Clear waters jumped with fish. Porpoises and whales were at home in the harbor.

Mannahatta’s curator, the landscape ecologist Dr. Eric Sanderson, was not intent on returning New York to its primeval condition — but he did hope that the show would sensitise New Yorkers to the living systems that continue to support their city. And a question was posed: Could these hidden ecological functions be relevant to the city’s future development?

A growing worldwide movement is looking at cities through the lens of living systems. In countless practical projects, city dwellers are re-connecting with the soils, trees, animals, landscapes, energy systems, water, and energy sources on which all life depends.

For the moment, this movement is mostly bottom-up, small-scale, and low-budget. It’s a barely visible mosaic in which rivers are restored by volunteers, car parks are depaved by activists, trees are planted by community teams, rainwater is harvested by neighbours, gadens are tended by school students, and nesting boxes for birds are installed by twitchers.

A lot of this work is carried out by community groups working street-by-street. As more small projects are completed,the to-do list expands. People notice that there are neglected parks to transform, gardens to revive, roadside verges to plant, empty roofs to green. There are vacant lots, abandoned buildings and empty malls to put to new use.

The fact that most of these actions are small does not diminish their significance. Change bubbling up from the bottom is how complex systems change — and cities are no exception. Besides, this proliferation of green shoots creates new work for for city managers and policy makers to do: Nurturing these thousands of tiny patches, removing obstacles, linking them together.

A startling question begins to be heard: Pull that weed out of its crack in the sidewalk — or let it grow?’

A growing number of people are inclined to welcome back the weeds in the cause of biodiversity. It turns out that there is more biodiversity in many cities than outside them. The lesson here is that cities, and not just rain forests, can provide ecosystem services when they are filled with plants and trees. When researchers in the UK visited parks, golf courses, abandoned warehouses and household gardens around the city of Leicester, they discovered that urban vegetation stores ten times more carbon dioxide than previously assumed.

Private gardens, too, have enormous potential to act as archipelago-like nature reserves for pollinating insects, whose populations have been plummeting across the U.S. and Europe. The UK’s 15 million backyard gardens cover about 270,000 hectares — more than the all the country’s official nature reserves combined.

Seattle’s Pollinator Pathway Program links together urbanism, farming and wilderness recovery in a connected whole. The artist and ecological designer Sarah Bergmann coordinates with citizens, urban planners, engineers, and parks departments to replant and connect small areas of public and privately owned urban land; the resulting corridors mimic the healthy systems commonly found in rural and wild environments. Each planting strip — usually a band of grass between sidewalk and street — is transformed into a pollinator-friendly garden that offers viable food and habitat to vitally important insects. Fifteen Pollinator Pathway gardens are now in place on Columbia.While motivated in part by concern for honeybee colonies, the project takes a long term perspective on support for regional food systems and emphasises support for a variety of native pollinator species and their favourite plants.

The English writer Richard Mabey was one of the first to suggest that the concepts of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ no longer apply. In The Unofficial Countryside, first published in 1973, Mabey describes his explorations of crumbling city docks, railway goods yards, sewage farms, and disused factory wastelands. He tells of his realisation that even the most unpromising, blasted and neglected urban landscape is capable of supporting life. “A crack in the pavement is all a plant needs to put down roots” Mabey recorded; “provided it is not actually contaminated there is scarcely a nook or cranny anywhere which does not provide the right living conditions for some plant or creature”

Many of these plants turn out to be edible. Herbal fruits, leaves and edible flowers grow on walls and roadsides, between paving stones, and in other untended spaces.

Urban biologist Claudia Biemans, an edible plants researcher in The Hague, identified about 300 different species in one square km of her city compared to 50 different species found in the same area of industrially-farmed countryside nearby. “Bees know this very well, and are more to be found in cities these days” she points out. On walks called ‘Stalking The Wild’, Biemans guides people to ecological niches in the city where plants don’t just survive, but thrive. Lynn Shore in Amsterdam, trading as Urban Herbology, is among a growing band of urban foragers who help citizens find herbs, use them in cooking, and learn about medicinal preparations. Shore’s activities include seed and plant swaps, urban herb walks, and ‘gatherings for urban herbies’.

In Los Angeles, a so-called ‘rock star of foraging’ called Pascal Baudar has turned foraging into a thriving business; Angelinos pay $100 a head to join his ‘Gourmet Foraging Sunset Experiences’ in which they learn about the culinary uses of weeds found in the local landscape. Baudar’‘s wild food classes sell out weeks ahead.

Less prosperous foragers — the majority — are using a free mobile phone app called Boskoito map the edible landscape; they share the location of wild-food in public spaces in an activity called ‘augmented foraging’.Boskoi, say its Dutch developers, combines the ancient knowledge of hunter-gatherers with today’s mobile technology. The word Boskoi, which is taken from Greek, dates back to the tradition of desert hermits the South Egyptian and Sudanese desert. This hardy band survived exclusively on wild herbs and rainwater, and were said to graze with wild herds of cattle.

Scientific researchers, following in the steps of these ecological artists, are unearthing plants and animals that are unique to cities — from mice and fish, to bugs and bacteria. In New York, scientists have identified mutations in more than 1,000 genes in the city’s mice — far more than than are found in mice from out of town. Not all change has been positive for biodiversity, of course: Manhattan was once home to 21 native species of orchids; these are now all extinct due to the replacement of woodland by open urban spaces.

Or are they? Their seeds may still be there. The notion that older ecologies lie beneath our cities, just waiting to self-resurrect, has long fascinated artists – and now scientists, too. Paleobotanists have discovered that ten square feet of urban soil can contain tens of thousands of dormant seeds. In his essay ‘City of Seeds’, the writer Daniel Mason reflects that,unlike the managed green of parks and gardens, which only grow in pockets of protected isolation, the wild plants of a city need “the cracks, the pavement split, the palace abandoned”. Beyond the managed gardens and the wild invaders of our roads. Mason concludes, is “a hidden, potential flora, an idea of a forest, not in competition with the city but existing alongside it, patiently, waiting to become manifest”.

http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/the-ecozoic-city/37765/

New York's Green Roofs Are Crawling With Fungi

Demand for green roofs might plummet if they became known as "fungal roofs." But that is what they are, at least in New York – and contrary to what it may sound like, it's not a bad thing.

The world just became a little more aware of the hidden-but-teeming biomass of green roofs thanks to the intrepid work of researchers from Barnard College, Columbia University, Fordham and the University of Colorado. Recently, these guys found themselves wondering if the gardens in the sky might support different kinds of life than the stuff at dog-pee level. It's a realm into which few scientific minds have tread. While green roofs as heat-island dampeners and rainwater-runoff plugs have been widely discussed, the extent to which they serve as urban "biodiversity reservoirs" (in the researchers' words) is something of a mystery.

So in the summer of 2011, the team set out to test the soil composition of 10 green roofs stationed at recreation centers throughout the five boroughs: Using soil corers, they hunted for fungi, because fungal communities play a key role in a roof garden's health and longevity. For comparison's sake, they also took samples from five city parks near some of the roofs, including Central Park and the High Line. A little magic from "inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy" at Alabama's Auburn University Soil Testing Laboratory, as well as a dollop of phospholipid fatty-acid extraction and Illumina-dye sequencing, and they had their results, which were published this month in the journal PLOS ONE.

So what were the conclusions? For one, these sun-kissed carpets of gray goldenrod and smooth blue aster are absolutely crawling with fungi. The researchers logged an average of 109 types of fungi per roof, such as Glomus, Acaulospora, Rhizophagus and Funneliformis, suggesting that green roofs can indeed contribute to urban biodiversity. As they explained:

"We found that green roofs supported a diverse fungal community, with numerous taxa belonging to fungal groups capable of surviving in disturbed and polluted habitats. Across roofs, there was significant biogeographical clustering of fungal communities, indicating that community assembly of roof microbes across the greater New York City area is locally variable. Green roof fungal communities were compositionally distinct from city parks and only 54% of the green roof taxa were also found in the park soils."

In other words, the roofs are home to fungi not typically given to squelching around in normal parkland. They also seem to be better for growing stuff you might, you know, put in your mouth: While the soil in New York's parks showed a greater biomass of microbes, it also tested higher for heavy metals, a scourge of urban gardens that can be unhealthy if consumed in larger quantities.

Here's a comparison the researchers put together illustrating how the roofs stacked up against the parks, in terms of the abundance of fungal phyla:

Needless to say, this is hardly the first news of green roofs supporting life. The elevated gardens are routinely patrolled by insects and in some cases much larger fauna. In Australia, for instance, the Adelaide Zoo maintains several grassy roofs that are designed as homes for urban plants and wildlife, like reptiles, insects and bats.

And an immense green roof in the U.K., mounted on a wastewater treatment facility near Brighton, attracts seagulls and crows that pluck at its quaking grass in search of food. To fight those hungry birds, the roof's overseers have released even more animals over the roof – ferocious goshawks, a golden eagle and even a great horned owl.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/03/new-yorks-green-roofs-are-crawling-fungus/4960/