Urban biodiversity and landscape organization

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Urbanization, one of the most extreme human-induced environmental changes, is negatively affecting global biodiversity, which clearly suggests that we need to reconcile urban development with conservation. Urbanization can follow two main types of development: land sharing (low housing density) and land sparing (high housing density). Recent studies at local scale indicate that biodiversity changes according to this type of urban development. This multidisciplinary project will investigate whether urban landscape organization affects urban biodiversity and human-nature interactions at a global scale using birds as a model group. The project will provide important, new and timely data in the fields of urban ecology, community ecology, behavioural ecology and social sciences. We will achieve this using a combination of descriptive and experimental studies with standard and state-of-the-art techniques (e.g. machine learning) and the collaboration of a well-established global network of urban ornithologists (e.g. URBICON network). In addition, the project has a clear and detailed dissemination plan, with several final products that will be useful to researchers, urban planners and citizens. In short, this is a multidisciplinary proposal with a very high potential scientific and social impact that will be very useful for generating more biodiversity-friendly cities in the future and reconciling urban expansion with biodiversity conservation.