Renaissance of a rural artifact in a city with a million people: biodiversity responses to an agro-forestry restoration in a large urban traditional fruit orchard

The rural landscapes surrounding large cities are rapidly becoming incorporated into the urban environment. The most conspicuous changes involve green spaces, such as former agro-forestry systems like fruit orchards. In this paper, we assess the influence on biodiversity of restoring a large urban traditional fruit orchard as reflected by six selected taxa: plants, lichens, butterflies, beetles, orthopteroids and birds. The study was performed in Prague, which is the capital city of the Czech Republic and has more than a million inhabitants. We studied the effect of orchard renewal in 45 patches (15 for birds and 30 for other taxa). The majority of taxa responded positively to the restoration. The restoration had a significant positive effect on the species richness of lichens, butterflies and beetles. All taxa showed significantly altered species compositions, and the number of red-listed species increased. Orchards have a high potential for multi-functional use. Orchards are productive agro-forestry systems and host numerous possible human activities. Therefore, orchard restoration also has a social aspect. Moreover, our research in this artificial ecosystem revealed that its restoration increased the biodiversity and conservation potential of the associated areas.

     

Effect of habitat characteristics on mesocarnivore occurrence in urban environment in the Central Europe

Although urbanization is generally considered a major threat to local and global biodiversity, some recent studies have shown that urban environments provide suitable habitat for some wildlife species, including carnivores, yet little is known about the factors that determinate their occurrence and habitat preferences. The main aim of this study was to examine the relative importance of habitat characteristics in relation to carnivore occurrence along an urban–rural gradient in the Central Europe. Carnivore occurrence was monitored using scent stations (summer period) and snow tracking (winter period) in the regional city which was divided into the network of 154 quadrates (25 ha/quadrate) for the purposes of this study. From a total of six recorded native carnivore species, the stone marten Martes foina and the least weasel Mustela nivalis were the most dominant and widespread species in both study periods. PCA analysis revealed the existence of two informative axes corresponding to (A) urban vs. non-urban habitat and (B) residential vs. industrial areas. Surprisingly, the only species exhibiting marked habitat selectivity and avoidance of highly urbanized areas was the red fox (i.e. negative correlation with the first PCA axis). The stone marten tends to avoid industrial areas and prefers residential areas; however its presence/absence was not associated with the first PCA axis. On the other hand, the ermine stoat and the least weasel were relatively unselective according to our results. In conclusion, our results demonstrate high adaptability of various species of carnivore mesopredators to urban environment; however their response to the level of urbanization and habitat characteristics exhibits interspecific variation.     

Mapping Socioeconomic Exposure for Flood Risk Assessment in Italy

Detailed spatial representation of socioeconomic exposure and the related vulnerability to natural hazards has the potential to improve the quality and reliability of risk assessment outputs. We apply a spatially weighted dasymetric approach based on multiple ancillary data to downscale important socioeconomic variables and produce a grid data set for Italy that contains multilayered information about physical exposure, population, gross domestic product, and social vulnerability. We test the performances of our dasymetric approach compared to other spatial interpolation methods. Next, we combine the grid data set with flood hazard estimates to exemplify an application for the purpose of risk assessment.