Joint Seminar: Inclusive Tools and Spatial Information to Reconcile Biodiversity Conservation and Land Use in an Urbanizing World

The WSL Biodiversity Center and the WSL Landscape Center are pleased to announce their first joint seminar to be held on 20 September 2023. The first invited speaker is Fritz Kleinschroth (ETH Zurich), who will present tools and approaches aiming at inclusive social-ecological planning to reconcile biodiversity conservation and infrastructure development.

Abstract

The world is facing a boom of infrastructure expansion, with massive implications for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. How to reconcile economic and urban needs with nature conservation and restoration in human-dominated landscapes? Landscape planning often involves the use of maps, aerial imagery, and spatial models as a base for decision-making and communication across actors. Yet not everyone is able to contribute and interpret spatial information in the same way, which hinders equity. There is a strong need to inform and enhance landscape planning with distributed field-based assessments and socially inclusive maps. In this talk, I will talk about tools and approaches that I have developed and contributed to during my work at the Ecosystem Management group aiming at inclusive social-ecological planning. Examples include: (a) A critical spatial assessment of global restoration priorities highlighting the need for social considerations; (b) A global mapping approach based on a systematic review of publications on urban greenspace use during COVID-19; (c) The use of drone imagery to facilitate landscape interpretation across diverse stakeholders; (d) A mixing board tool to assess and improve the integration of landscape approaches. In combination, these tools support a diverse agenda of spatially explicit and socially inclusive landscape planning to reconcile biodiversity conservation and infrastructure development.

Recent papers

Löfqvist, S., Kleinschroth, F., Bey, A., Bremond, A. de, DeFries, R., Dong, J., Fleischman, F., Lele, S., Martin, D. A., Messerli, P., Meyfroidt, P., Pfeifer, M., Rakotonarivo, S. O., Ramankutty, N., Ram, V., & Garrett, R. D. (2023). How social considerations improve equity and effectiveness of ecosystem restoration. BioScience, biac099. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac099

Kleinschroth, F., Savilaakso, S., Kowarik, I., Martinez, P. J., Chang, Y., & Fischer Leonie, K. (in Review). The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of urban greenspace: A systematic review. See the protocol here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7244528  

Kleinschroth, F., Banda, K., Zimba, H., Dondeyne, S., Nyambe, I., Spratley, S., & Winton, R. S. (2022). Drone imagery to create a common understanding of landscapes. Landscape and Urban Planning, 104571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104571

Waeber, P.O., Carmenta, R., Carmona, N.E., Garcia, C.A., Falk, T., Fellay, A., Ghazoul, J., Reed, J., Willemen, L., Zhang, W., Kleinschroth, F., (2023). Structuring the complexity of integrated landscape approaches into selectable, scalable, and measurable attributes. Environmental Science and Policy 147, 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.06.003

About the speaker

Fritz Kleinschroth is a Senior Scientist in the Ecosystem Management group at the USYS Department at ETH Zurich. He is working on landscape approaches to integrate built infrastructures and ecosystems along urban-rural gradients. He spatially tracks landscape transitions based on maps and remote sensing and analyzes them in the context of social and ecological processes on the ground. Fritz studied landscape planning at TU Berlin and worked several years as an ecological consultant and habitat mapper in Germany. He holds a dual-degree PhD in Forestry from Bangor University, UK and Biodiversity and Conservation from AgroParisTech, France.

Live stream

Our seminars are hybrid. Please send an email to events-biodiversity(at)wsl.ch if you would like to get access to the live stream.

BD-Seminars

The Biodiversity Seminar Series (BD-Seminars) are organized by the WSL Biodiversity Center. Every two weeks, we aim to host a seminar speaker that presents research or outreach on topics relevant to the biodiversity community at WSL. The seminars are public and are usually broadcasted online.

Find out more about the WSL Biodiversity Center and a complete list of events here:

https://www.wsl.ch/en/about-wsl/organisation/programmes-and-initiatives/wsl-biodiversity-center.html

Please send an email to events-biodiversity(at)wsl.ch if you would like to be updated on the activities of the WSL Biodiversity Center.