Martin Dallimer

Imperial College London | Imperial

Over half of the world's human population lives in cities, and for many, urban greenspaces are the only places where they encounter biodiversity. This is of particular concern because there is growing evidence that human well-being is enhanced by exposure to nature. However, the specific qualities of greenspaces that offer the greatest benefits rem...

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...

Urban expansion is an increasing threat to biodiversity, especially in tropical Africa where biodiversity hot spots are being encroached upon by fast‐growing cities. Threatened species include bees and other pollinators, which deliver important ecosystem services but are sensitive to land use changes. We investigated the impact of urbanisation and...

Researchers, practitioners and policymakers have widely documented the multifarious ways that nature influences human well‐being. However, we still have only a limited understanding of how the public interact with, respond to and talk about attributes of biodiversity. We used image‐based Q methodology to explore the shared and contrasting perspecti...

Exposure to urban greenspaces promotes a variety of mental health benefits. However, much of the evidence for these benefits is biased towards high-income countries. In contrast, urban areas in low-income settings that have the highest rates of urbanisation remain understudied. Given the increasing burden of mental ill-health associated with urbani...

Across the globe, mobile species are key components of ecosystems. Migratory birds and nomadic antelope can have considerable conservation, economic or societal value, while irruptive insects can be major pests and threaten food security. Extreme weather events, which are increasing in frequency and intensity under ongoing climate change, are drivi...

Biodiversity declines are accelerating globally, impacting ecosystem functioning, with consequences for human health. Interactions with biodiversity can benefit human wellbeing, leading to avoided healthcare costs. However, existing research does not account for the species within ecological communities and their effect traits that elicit wellbeing...

The Afrotropics are experiencing some of the fastest urbanisation rates on the planet but the impact of city growth on their rich and unique biodiversity remains understudied, especially compared to natural baselines. Little is also known about how introduced species influence β‐diversity in these contexts, and how patterns coincide with native ran...

Background: Evidence on the health benefits of spending time in nature has highlighted the importance of pro vision of blue and green spaces where people live. The potential for health benefits offered by nature exposure, however, extends beyond health promotion to health treatment. Social prescribing links people with health or social care needs...

Tackling environmental challenges that face humanity requires us to acknowledge new ways of working and to cross disciplinary boundaries. However, the methodological toolkit used by environmental researchers to explore the human attitudes, knowledge and behaviours that drive global challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate breakdown remains...

Moringa oleifera’s high nutritional value and bioactive properties have attracted significant scientific research interest as an additive in broiler feed for sustainable broiler production. The tree’s multifunctional characteristics make it a potent alternative growth promoter for broilers and a valuable resource to address Sustainable Development...

Language is central to the way people learn about the natural world. A salient concern of the biodiversity conservation arena has been to understand how language can be employed by scientists to communicate knowledge to nonexpert audiences and build ecological literacy. The use of analogy and narrative by scientists are prominent techniques. In thi...

Background: Evidence on the health benefits of spending time in nature has highlighted the importance of provision of blue and green spaces in peoples living environments. The potential for health benefits offered by nature exposure, however, extends beyond health promotion to health treatment. Social prescribing links people with health or social...

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...

Assessing ecosystem services associated with agricultural landscapes is of growing interest to the research and policy/practice communities. One particularly challenging aspect to understand is the value of the aesthetic quality of such landscapes, even though this is one of the main contributions that agricultural landscapes make to cultural ecosy...

The need to recognise plural values and integrate these into policy design has long been of interest in nature conservation. However, we also need to understand whether and how different values are prioritised among diverse stakeholders. This is particularly important when indigenous and traditional cultures play a role in how land is managed and p...

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Surface urban heat island Cooling effect Greenspace Canopy coverage Land surface temperature A B S T R A C T As climate warms, the impact of existing urban heat islands on the health of residents in towns and cities will worsen. A reduction in impervious in cities may help to reduce temperatures, but the relationship...

People rely on well-functioning ecosystems to provide critical services that underpin human health and well-being. Consequently, biodiversity loss has profound negative implications for humanity. Human–biodiversity interactions can deliver individual-level well-being gains, equating to substantial healthcare cost savings when scaled up across popul...

Nature-based interventions are organised outdoor activities that aim to improve people's health through engaging with nature. These interventions are increasingly being offered through green social prescribing, where link workers support people to access activities that 'matter to them'. • Identifying reliable and accessible research evidence about...

Few studies have effectively analysed the spatial patterns of urban smellscapes, public perception, exposure risks, or design an inclusive decision-support system. The current study coupled multiple methods to measure, map, and compare notable smell emitting spots, associated air quality indices, and public perception in Kano, Nigeria. It has revea...

In the face of biodiversity decline, understanding the impact of anthropogenic disturbances on ecosystem functions is critical for mitigation. Elevated levels of pollution are a major threat to biodiversity, yet there is no synthesis of their impact on many of the major ecosystem functions, including pollination. This ecosystem function is both par...

Mental health is influenced by multiple complex and interacting genetic, psychological, social, and environmental factors. As such, developing state-of-the-art mental health knowledge requires collaboration across academic disciplines, including environmental science. To assess the current contribution of environmental science to this field, a scop...

Species distribution models (SDM) are widely applied to understand changing species geographical distribution and abundance patterns. However, existing SDM tools are inherently static and inadequate for modelling species distributions that are driven by dynamic environmental conditions. dynamicsdm provides novel tools that explicitly consider the t...

The evidence linking nature and human wellbeing is compelling. Yet, there is a lack of understanding regarding which aspects of nature contribute to wellbeing and the role biodiversity plays specifically. This knowledge gap hampers our ability to understand and manage natural environments from an ecological perspective to improve human wellbeing. T...

Forest restoration/creation is a policy focus worldwide, with initiatives pledging to plant billions of trees. While there is an emphasis on providing “the right tree in the right place,” we need to understand for whom the trees are right. Such social dimensions are frequently overlooked, despite being critical to successful forest restoration/crea...

Compelling evidence demonstrates links between greenspaces and human well-being. However, the existing evidence has a strong bias towards high-income countries. Rapidly urbanising cities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain largely unexplored. The rising prevalence of mental disorders in LMICs highlights the need to better understand...

Rapid urbanisation is affecting people in different ways, with some becoming more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Africa’s cities are projected to be home to nearly 60% of the continent’s population by 2050. In conjunction with climate change, these cities are experiencing critical environmental challenges, including changes in the urb...

Values are the motivational goals that underpin individual and group decisions, attitudes, and behaviours, and often influence the success of conservation. Existing studies have provided insight into the perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders towards forest conservation values. However, there are still contentions among different stakeholders re...

This chapter examines the scientific understanding of how climate change impacts land degradation, and vice versa, with a focus on non-drylands. Land degradation of drylands is covered in Chapter 3. After providing definitions and the context (Section 4.1) we proceed with a theoretical explanation of the different processes of land degradation and...

Evidence of the impact arising from environmental research is increasingly demanded. Exchanges between science providers and actors that use scientific knowledge to address environmental problems are recognized as a key component of the mechanisms through which impact occurs. Yet, the role of interactions between science and policy actors in delive...

The link between nature and human wellbeing is well established. However, few studies go beyond considering the visual and auditory underpinnings of this relationship, even though engaging with nature is a multisensory experience. While research linking smell to wellbeing exists, it focuses predominantly on smells as a source of nuisance/offence. S...

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and auton...

Policy tools are needed that allow reconciliation of human development pressures with conservation priorities. Biodiversity offsetting can be used to compensate for ecological losses caused by development activities. Landowners can choose to undertake conservation actions, including habitat restoration, to generate biodiversity offsets. Considerati...

Herbivory plays a significant role in regulating many contemporary terrestrial plant ecosystems, but remains an imperfectly understood component of past ecosystem dynamics because the diagnostic capability of methods is still being tested and refined. To understand the efficacy of a multiproxy approach, we compare the sensitivity of pollen and copr...

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...

Habitat alterations resulting from land-use change are major drivers of global biodiversity losses. In Africa, these threats are especially severe. For instance, demand to convert land into agricultural uses is leading to increasing areas of drylands in southern and central Africa being transformed for agriculture. In Zimbabwe, a land reform progra...

Visions of sustainable cities mostly conjure up well tended home and community gardens, where owners and residents plant fruits and vegetables that supply some of their livelihood needs. Indeed, home gardens can contribute to household food security but often fail to do so. Moreover, gardens can provide several additional ecosystem services and imp...

Climate change and biodiversity loss are deeply intertwined anthropogenic global crises, for which forests provide powerful nature-based solutions. Biodiverse forests are more resilient to climate change than mono-cultures, thereby enhancing long-term carbon storage and ecosystem-based adaptation. Awareness of these in-terdependencies is slowly gro...

Rapid urbanisation and climate change are two major trends in Africa in need of further investigation. In this paper, the urban thermal environment and vegetation abundance in four East African cities (Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Kampala and Dar es Salaam) were characterised, providing new insights into the role and potentials of blue green infrastructu...

River networks are among Earth’s most threatened hot-spots of biodiversity and provide key ecosystem services (e.g., supply drinking water and food, climate regulation) essential to sustaining human well-being. Climate change and increased human water use are causing more rivers and streams to dry, with devastating impacts on biodiversity and ecosy...

Climate change and desertification continue to threaten livelihoods in drylands across the globe. This study explores the relative importance of Sustainable Livelihoods Framework components in explaining variation in the adaptive capacity of agricultural households in three districts in the drylands of south Punjab, Pakistan, and to identify spatia...

Agricultural Land-Use Change (ALUC) is a major driver of global environmental change, not least via its direct impact on the sustainability and resilience of the rural economy. Its drivers are complex and have remained contentious, necessitating further empirical study. This study aims to derive context-specific evidence on the driving factors and...

Transdisciplinary solutions are needed to achieve the sustainability of ecosystem services for future generations. We propose a framework to identify the causes of ecosystem function loss and to forecast the future of ecosystem services under different climate and pollution scenarios. The framework (i) applies an artificial intelligence (AI) time-s...

Participatory approaches are widely used by researchers to gather data and insight about how the environment is perceived, valued and used. The participatory activities may be creating information as part of curiosity‐driven blue‐skies research or to inform policy/practise decision‐making. The quality and usability of data derived from participator...

Biodiversity offset markets can incentivize private landowners to take actions that benefit biodiversity. A spatially explicit integrated ecological-economic model is developed and employed for a UK region where offset buyers (house developers) and sellers (farmers) interact through trading offset credits. We simulate how changes in the ecological...

Habitat alterations that often accompany land-use change are one of the major drivers of global biodiversity losses. In Africa, these threats are especially severe, as this continent has the most rapidly growing of all human populations. Inevitably, increasing areas of land are being transformed for agriculture, including drought-prone drylands in...

People's preferences influence national priorities for economic development and ecological integrity. Often policy makers and development agents base their actions on unclear assumptions about such preferences. This paper explores rural citizens' preferences for economic and ecological development outcomes and how they differ within and between com...

This best practice training manual was produced as part of an international collaboration between Bayero University Kano (BUK), Nigeria, and Universities of Leeds and York, UK. The collaboration, funded by the UK PACT Green Recovery Challenge Fund, aims to develop innovative training to support cost-effective irrigation-free indigenous tree restora...

Human attitudes and behaviours have been linked to the degradation of global biodiversity, particularly forest ecosystems. Indeed, effective conservation actions require that the attitudes and behaviours of affected individuals and communities are taken into account. While several studies have examined how human attitudes and behaviours affect cons...

Ecosystem degradation represents one of today’s major global challenges, threatening human well-being and livelihoods worldwide. To reverse continuing degradation, we need to understand its socio-economic consequences so that these can be incorporated into ecosystem management decisions. This requires links to be made between our understanding of h...

Due to the combined effects of urban growth and climate change, rapid urbanisation is particularly challenging in African cities. Areas that will house a large proportion of the urban population in the future coincide with where natural hazards are expected to occur, and where hazard risk management institutions, knowledge, and capacity are often l...

Urban greenspaces underpin ecosystem service provision in cities and are therefore indispensable for human well-being. Nevertheless, they are increasingly disappearing from cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding how the stakeholders influencing urban greenspace management perceive the benefits provided by urban greenspaces and the challenges t...

Background Interest in impact evaluation has grown rapidly as research funders increasingly demand evidence that their investments lead to public benefits. Aims This paper analyses literature to provide a new definition of research impact and impact evaluation, develops a typology of research impact evaluation designs, and proposes a methodologica...

Due to the combination of climate change and the rapid growth in urban populations in Africa, many urban areas are encountering exacerbated urban heat island (UHI) effects. It is important to understand UHI effects in order to develop suitable adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, little work has been done in this regard in Africa. In this...

Most programmes which incentivise the supply of public goods such as biodiversity conservation on private land in Europe are financed through the public purse. However, new ideas for how to fund biodiversity conservation are urgently needed, given recent reviews of the poor state of global biodiversity. In this paper, we investigate the use of priv...

Urbanization involves expansion of the amount of land covered by urban uses. Rural to urban land conversion (RULC) can satisfy demand for the additional space that growing cities require. However, there can be negative consequences, such as the loss of productive agricultural land and/or the destruction of natural habitats. Considerable interest th...

The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) is a widely recognised phenomenon that profoundly affects the quality of life for urban citizens. Urban greenspace can help mitigate the UHIE, but the characteristics that determine the extent to which any given greenspace can cool an urban area are not well understood. A key characteristic is likely to be the pr...

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...

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...