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ZuriDiverCity

ZuriDiverCity - Applying predictive models in urban ecology

Increasing urbanization worldwide poses threats but also offering opportunities for biodiversity conservation. Although the number of urban ecology studies is increasing, the knowledge on urban biodiversity is still hampered by the difficulty of extrapolating traditional biodiversity point measurements to a larger scale, e.g. a whole city. Predictive models, including species distribution models (SDMs), have proved to be a key tool to solve this shortfall in biodiversity knowledge at studies set at larger spatial scales. However, predictive models have rarely been used in the context of urban areas due to either the lack of sufficient species records or high-quality predictors.

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Distribution of the study sites of four urban ecology projects conducted by the WSL in the last decade (from Casanelles-Abella et al. 2021).

 

The WSL has sampled during several years the urban biodiversity of the city of Zürich across gradients of urban intensity and in different urban green areas (for instance, private gardens, allotments, parks, cemeteries, green roofs, ruderal areas). This has generated an extensive dataset composed of several taxonomic groups, particularly of less studied invertebrate taxa including millipedes, isopods, worms, snails. In addition, there are a large number of variables describing environmental conditions available for Zurich at a high resolution, such as LiDAR, habitat maps or pollution and climatic models.

 

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Animated map of the city of Zurich showing the predicted biodiversity OF 12 taxonomic groups modelled in Casanelles-Abella et al. 2021. The colour scale represents the diversity of species, from low (dark blue and purple) to high (yellow). White areas indicate bodies of water, annual crops and forests, which were not included in the study. The taxonomic groups modelled are: bees, birds, ground beetles, hoverflies, myriapods (centipedes, millipedes, etc.), Neuroptera (net-winged insects), other beetles, snails, spiders, Heteroptera (true bugs), Curculionidae (true weevils) and wasps.

 

ZuriDiverCity aims to further explore the ecological properties of urban ecosystems regarding the distribution of individual species as well as the community attributes (e.g. taxonomic and trait-based metrics), using Zurich as a model city. Specifically, the project aims to: (1) understand the drivers and mechanisms shaping urban biodiversity; (2) map at the city level the distribution of individual species as well as community attributes; (3) uncover potential cold- and hotspots of diversity, and thus city areas of high ecological interest; and, (4) inform planning and management of urban ecosystems to enhance biodiversity, particularly in the face of ongoing external pageurban biodiversity strategies and external pageclimate adaptation.

 

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Some examples of urban animals in the city of Zurich, which have also been sampled by the WSL. From the top to the right: a Girdled Snail (Hygromia cinctella), a widespread snail species in the city, resting in a shrub in a ruderal area in Alstetten; the exotic Mexican Grass-carrying Wasp (Isodontia mexicana), a wasp originally from North and Central America currently in expansion in Europe, hunting in an unmown meadow of a private house; a female Oblong Woolcarder Bee (Anthidium oblongatum), a rare cavity-nesting bee, collects plant trichomes to build a nest in the Old Botanical Garden of Zurich, in the city centre; a House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), one of the most abundant and common birds in urban areas, eats discarded food in Zurich’s Bïrkliplatz; a Hummingbird Hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) feeds on an invasive plant species (Buddleja davidii) growing in a tiny piece of free soil in a construction site at the Industrial Quartier; a Musk Beetle (Aromia moschata) with its distict coppery coloration in Louis-Häfliger-Park. Credit: Joan Casanelles-Abella.

 

The project ZuriDiverCity is a collaboration between five WSL research groups, that is, Conservation Biology (Dr. Marco Moretti), Dynamic Macroecology (Yohann Chauvier), Resource Analysis (Dr. Florian Zellweger), Remote Sensing (Christian Ginzler) and Landscape Ecology, and the ETHZ group Landscape Ecology (Prof. Dr. Loïc Pellissier).

 

Contact information:

Joan Casanelles-Abella

external pageJoan Casanelles-Abella

 

 

 

Publications

external pageCasanelles-Albella et al. (2021). Applying predictive models to study the ecological properties of urban ecosystems: A case study in Zürich, Switzerland. Landscape and Urban Planning, Volume 214, October 2021, 104137.

external pageWSL News:Zurich home to some rare species.

 

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