Urban landscape ecology and its evaluation : a review

Abstract

Urban landscapes exhibit combinations of environmental features that are rarely encountered in non-urban settings resulting in habitat types, habitat associations and vegetation communities not found elsewhere. As a result urban areas are often surprisingly diverse, containing much in the way of interest for landscape ecologists. The intricate mix of the seminatural and anthropogenic that urban areas provide has traditionally been overlooked in Landscape Ecology compared to non-urban and natural / semi-natural landscapes. Landscapescale studies that claim to be comprehensive rarely extend the necessary detail into the urban environment and when they do they use such large units of assessment that they obscure anything but the most obvious distinctions. Where work has been done it has largely focused on specific habitat types, such as open space or tree cover, rather than the whole spatial context of the urban environment. Increasingly important in applied landscape research are studies of small and transient patches of natural greenspace, biodiversity-rich islands and important constituents of the socio-cultural landscape alongside the intensively managed and remnant semi-natural parts of the wider urban environment. This ties in to the wider considerations of habitat fragmentation, landscape connectivity and integrated landscape management that is now vital in ensuring the continued existence of biodiversity in the urban area and beyond. As consultative requirements are passed on to many statutory bodies the necessity to have quality data at landscape scales but with significant and relevant localised detail is an area which is likely to significantly engage landscape ecologists in the foreseeable future