Large Cities Fall Behind in “Neighborhood Biodiversity”
Superfisky collaborated with UCLA and CalState LA to publish an article in Frontiers of Conservation Science investigating scale’s impact on urban biodiversity.
Urbanization is a major driver of global species loss. While cities with suitable habitats and conservation policies may support locally-high biodiversity levels, the complexity of managing very large cities might counteract the advantage of large geographic area, and these cities may be less effective at biodiversity conservation.
Using Los Angeles County as a case study, the team of authors compared biodiversity management within the County's 88 cities of various sizes and characteristics. The relationship between the number of native indicator wildlife species (mean and maximum) in 112 cities across three metropolitan areas in California (Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose) were analyzed, with metrics related to scale and environmental variables.
The study found that indicator species richness is positively related to area, income (the luxury effect), and pervious cover—including trees, shrubs, and grasses. Despite having a high maximum number of indicator species within their boundaries, the largest cities in the study—Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego—do a relatively poor job compared with smaller cities at distributing native biodiversity throughout neighborhoods, as measured by their mean species richness. Such variation in “neighborhood biodiversity” may exacerbate existing inequities in residents' access to nature.
