Mark A Goddard

Northumbria University · Department of Geography and Environment

As urbanisation increases globally and the natural environment becomes increasingly fragmented, the importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation grows. In many countries, private gardens are a major component of urban green space and can provide considerable biodiversity benefits. Gardens and adjacent habitats form interconnected...

Urban areas are often perceived to have lower biodiversity than the wider countryside, but a few small-scale studies suggest that some urban land uses can support substantial pollinator populations. We present a large-scale, well-replicated study of floral resources and pollinators in 360 sites incorporating all major land uses in four British citi...

It is through urban biodiversity that the majority of humans experience nature on a daily basis. As cities expand globally, it is increasingly important to understand how biodiversity is shaped by human decisions, institutions, and environments. In some cities, research has documented convergence between high socioeconomic status (SES) and high spe...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

It is critical to protect Earth’s biodiversity, not just for its own intrinsic value, but also for the ecosystem services it underpins. Yet biodiversity is in crisis, with up to 1 million animal and plant species at risk of extinction, many within decades. This dire projection has captured world attention and triggered major mitigation efforts, but...

The primary threat to biodiversity is habitat loss and degradation. Private residential land (yards) encompass large proportions of urban, suburban, and rural spaces and is among the most rapidly expanding systems on Earth. Yards also represent a conservation opportunity to provide wildlife habitat, support biodiversity, restore ecosystem function...

Most of the global population are urban, with inhabitants exposed to raised levels of pollution. Pollutants negatively impact human wellbeing, and can alter the structure and diversity of ecosystems. Contrastingly, urban biodiversity can positively contribute to human wellbeing. We know little, however, about whether the negative impacts of polluti...

1. The novelty of nature-based solutions (NbS) for cities lies in a focus on the cost-effective provision of multiple co-benefits for many urban residents. 2. A participatory placemaking approach to equitable co-design, co-creation and co-management of NbS that include multiple stakeholders and beneficiaries has the potential to maintain or improve...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

Brownfield site redevelopment presents an opportunity to create urban green spaces that provide a wide range of ecosystem services. It is important, therefore, to understand which ecosystem services are demanded by sta-keholders and whether there are trade-offs or synergies in this demand. We performed a quantitative survey of ecosystem service dem...

Management of urban brownfield land can contribute to significant removal of atmospheric CO2 through the development of soil carbonate minerals. However, the potential magnitude and stability of this carbon sink is poorly quantified as previous studies address a limited range of conditions and short durations. Furthermore, the suitability of carbon...

Renaturing cities requires a thorough understanding of how plants and animals interact with the urban environment and humans. But cities are a challenging environment for ecologists to work in, with high levels of heterogeneity and rapid rates of change. In addition, the hostile conditions often found in cities mean that each city, and region of a...

Aim Urbanization broadly affects the phylogenetic and functional diversity of natural communities through a variety of processes including habitat loss and the introduction of non‐native species. Due to the challenge of acquiring direct measurements, these effects have been studied primarily using “space‐for‐time” substitution where spatial urbaniz...

Africa is urbanizing at an astonishing rate. To meet many of the Sustainable Development Goals there will be a requirement for cities in sub-Saharan Africa to plan for, and manage, the rapid rise in the urban population. Green infrastructure has the potential to provide multiple ecosystem services to benefit the urban population. The general object...

As urban areas expand, understanding how ecological processes function in cities has become increasingly important for conserving biodiversity. Urban green spaces are critical habitats to support biodiversity, but we still have a limited understanding of their ecology and how they function to conserve biodiversity at local and landscape scales acro...

Roadside verges in Britain support 238,000 hectares of vegetated land and approximately 10 hectares of vegetated central reserves. These areas have the potential to be engineered in such a way that they deliver a range of ecosystem services including flood regulation and biodiversity conservation in addition to their primary functions such as comfo...

Cities play important roles in the conservation of global biodiversity, particularly through the planning and management of urban green spaces (UGS). However, UGS management is subject to a complex assortment of interacting social, cultural, and economic factors, including governance, economics, social networks, multiple stakeholders, individual pr...

Cities represent considerable opportunities for forwarding global biodiversity and sustainability goals. We developed key attributes for conserving biodiversity and for ecosystem services that should be included in urban-planning documents and reviewed 135 plans from 40 cities globally. The most common attributes in city plans were goals for habita...

The rapid urbanization of the world has profound effects on global biodiversity, and urbanization has been counted among the processes contributing to the homogenization of the world’s biota. However, there are few generalities of the patterns and drivers of urban birds and even fewer global comparative studies. Comparable methodologies and dataset...

Residential landscapes with private yards and gardens are a major land cover in many cities, represent a considerable opportunity for bird conservation and enhance human experiences with wildlife. The number of studies of birds in residential landscapes is increasing worldwide, but a global-scale perspective on this research is lacking. Here we rev...

Recent research has demonstrated considerable potential for artificial soils to be designed for carbon capture. The incorporation of quarry fines enables the accumulation of atmospheric CO 2 in newly formed carbonate minerals. However, the rate and trajectory of carbon accumulation has been little studied. The relative contribution of biotic (e.g....

The ecosystem services framework (ESF) is advantageous and widely used for itemising and quantifying ways in which humans benefit from natural places. However, it suffers from two important problems: (i) incoherence of definitions and (ii) a narrow approach to valuation, inadequate to represent the full range of human motives for conservation and t...

1.This review assesses current knowledge about the interplay between landscape and pollinator communities. Our primary aim is to provide an evidence base, identify key gaps in knowledge and highlight initiatives that will help develop and improve strategies for pollinator conservation. 2.Human-dominated landscapes (such as arable land and urban en...

Roadside verges in Britain support 238,000 hectares of vegetated land and approximately 10 hectares of vegetated central reserves. These areas have the potential to be engineered in such a way that they deliver a range of ecosystem services such as flood regulation and biodiversity conservation in addition to their primary functions such as comfort...

The majority of humanity now lives in cities or towns, with this proportion expected to continue increasing for the foreseeable future. As novel ecosystems, urban areas offer an ideal opportunity to examine multi-scalar processes involved in community assembly as well as the role of human activities in modulating environmental drivers of biodiversi...

ABSTRACT Pollen beetles (Nitidulidae, Meligethinae) are among the most abundant flower-visiting insects in Europe. While some species damage millions of hectares of crops annually, the biology of many species is little known. We assessed the utility of a 797 base pair fragment of the cytochrome oxidase 1 gene to resolve Molecular Operational Taxon...

The majority of humanity now lives in cities or towns, with this proportion expected to continue increasing for the foreseeable future. As novel ecosystems, urban areas offer an ideal opportunity to examine multi-scalar processes involved in community assembly as well as the role of human activities in modulating environmental drivers of biodiversi...

Planted meadows are increasingly used to improve the biodiversity and aesthetic amenity value of urban areas. Although many 'pollinator-friendly' seed mixes are available, the floral resources these provide to flower-visiting insects, and how these change through time, are largely unknown. Such data are necessary to compare the resources provided b...

Effects of sampling effort, in terms of numbers of 1m2 quadrats sampled, on estimates of the mean and variance of meadow nectar sugar mass per day. Coloured plots show nine runs of sampling data from 40 randomised quadrats, sampled without replacement. (A) Inch Park A2 annual meadow, Edinburgh, on 29/08/2012 (n = 99 quadrats sampled, overall mean o...

Seasonal patterns in nectar sugar mass/m2/day for each site in (a) Bristol, (b) Leeds, and (c) Reading. Point values shown are means, with 95% confidence intervals shaded. Low values for Victoria Park (perennial, Bristol) Tames Promenade (A1, Reading) and Portman Road west (A1 Reading) were associated with management problems, and these sites were...

Seasonal patterns in pollen volume per m2/day for each site in (a) Bristol, (b) Leeds, and (c) Reading. Point values shown are means, with 95% confidence intervals shaded. Low values for Victoria Park (perennial, Bristol) Tames Promenade (A1, Reading) and Portman Road west (A1 Reading) were associated with management problems, and these sites were...

Pollen and floral unit longevity quantification methods. (DOCX)

Widely available pollinator seed mixes and their constituent plant species. A cross in the row for a plant species indicates presence in a given seed mix. The Count column at right shows the total number of mixes in which a given species is represented. The most commonly shared species include Centaurea cyanus, Leucanthemum vulgare (5 mixes), and C...

The relationship between laboratory measures of pollen volume /floral unit and model-fitted values. The table below shows the coefficients for the best-fit model, in which the missing anther size category (large) corresponds to the intercept value. The plot shows the relationship between lab measured and modelled values for the test data (red) and...

Comparison of species nectar sugar mass values per floral unit for different populations of the same species, generated using the same assay protocols by Edinburgh and by Baude et al. (2016) [57]. (a) Plot showing Edinburgh (x axis) and Baude et al (2016) (y axis) values for per-species nectar sugar mass, relative to a line with equation x = y. Err...

Floral resources by species. Common names, resource levels/day, and floral longevities for the species in the annual and perennial seed mixes used in the study, and associated weeds. Total pollen volumes per flower (rather than volumes/day) and their errors are given in S3 Table. Species for which we did not estimate resources (given prioritisation...

Effects of sampling effort, in terms of numbers of 1m2 quadrats sampled, on estimates of the mean and variance of meadow pollen volume per day. Coloured plots show nine runs of sampling data from 40 randomised quadrats, sampled without replacement. (A) Inch Park A2 annual meadow, Edinburgh, on 29/08/2012 (n = 99 quadrats sampled, overall mean 45.25...

Statistical modelling of the relationship between time (number of days after planting) and mean floral unit density per quadrat for Edinburgh A1 meadows. (PDF)

Nectar quantification methods. (DOCX)

Univariate analysis outputs of mvabund, showing species contributing most significantly to variation in meadow composition (incorporating both presence absence and relative abundance of floral units across surveys). The species listed in each table comprise those with an individual p ≤ 0.05 or the set of species contributing cumulatively to 50% of...

Meadow seeding and maintenance protocols. (DOCX)

Sample site location information. Study site information for each of the four cities (Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds and Reading). Site location information includes the location name (most often a park or school), street name location, and UK vice county (VC) name and number. The column ‘Block’ refers to the location of each site within 5 geographicall...

Data used to model the relationship between floral morphology (anther size class, mean stamen number per floret or flower) and measured mean pollen volume per flower or floret. Data are provided on standard errors of mean measured values, and model fitted values (for model, see S3 Fig). We provide two measures of the mismatch between measured and m...

Living With Environmental Change (LWEC). Policy and Practice Note No.20 – Insect Pollinators Initiative

The increase in global temperature and the continuing threat of climate change has occurred due to rapid escalation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, especially CO2. This is directly related to human activity and comparatively recent combustion of fossil fuels. To compensate for the anthropogenic emissions of CO2, it is essential to opt...

The increase in global temperature and the continuing threat of climate change has occurred due to rapid escalation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, especially CO2. This is directly related to human activity and comparatively recent combustion of fossil fuels. To compensate for the anthropogenic emissions of CO2, it is essential to opt...

The increase in global temperature and the continuing threat of climate change has occurred due to rapid escalation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, especially CO2. This is directly related to human activity and comparatively recent combustion of fossil fuels. To compensate for the anthropogenic emissions of CO2, it is essential to opt...

Brownfield ecosystem multifunctionality: Engineering carbon capture and other ecosystem services in the urban environment

Recent research into soil engineering indicates that increased carbon sequestration through the conversion of atmospheric CO 2 to a pedogenic carbonate mineral (calcite, CaCO 3) may help mitigate global warming through artificially engineering a variety of soils with selected materials and vegetation so that they have a photosynthesis-driven carbon...

Insect pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service, but are under threat. Urban areas could be important for pollinators, though their value relative to other habitats is poorly known. We compared pollinator communities using quantified flower-visitation networks in 36 sites (each 1 km2) in three landscapes: urban, farmland and nature reserves....

Insect pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service, but are under threat. Urban areas could be important for pollinators, though their value relative to other habitats is poorly known. We compared pollinator communities using quantified flower-visitation networks in 36 sites (each 1 km²) in three landscapes: urban, farmland and nature reserves....

Urbanization contributes to the loss of the world's biodiversity and the homogenization of its biota. However, comparative studies of urban biodiversity leading to robust generalities of the status and drivers of biodiversity in cities at the global scale are lacking. Here, we compiled the largest global dataset to date of two diverse taxa in citie...

Residential landscapes with private gardens are major land covers in cities and their sustainable management is paramount for achieving a resilient urban future. Here we focus on the value of residential ecosystems for biodiversity conservation and explore the social and ecological factors that influence wildlife-friendly garden management. Using a...

Background/Question/Methods Cities are novel ecosystems characterized by fragmented and disturbed environments, high densities of fabricated structures and impervious surfaces, and elevated levels of certain resources. Globally, these commonalities, in combination with human mediated biotic interchange, may result in the homogenization of species...

Background/Question/Methods As urbanization increases globally and the natural environment becomes increasingly fragmented, the importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation grows. Residential landscapes with private gardens are particularly crucial settings for biodiversity conservation, being a major land cover and places where...

Abstract of a paper presented at the 2012 Urban Biodiversity Conference, on 9 October 2012, at IIT-Bombay, India.

Guidelines for submitting commentsPolicy: Comments that contribute to the discussion of the article will be posted within approximately three business days. We do not accept anonymous comments. Please include your email address; the address will not be displayed in the posted comment. Cell Press Editors will screen the comments to ensure that they...