On Thursday, June 27, the RISE project team hosted a Symposium entitled “Surveys, drones, and hydrological modelling: Planning urban residential landscapes for climate change responsiveness and biodiversity co-benefits” as part of the North American Congress for Conservation Biology’s 2024 meeting.
The RISE Symposium aimed to discuss sustainable urban development through a complex socio-ecological systems lens, presenting results to date from the various RISE project activities on opportunities for investing in urban blue-green infrastructure.
Project Director and Lead Principal Investigator Michael Drescher presented on the complex and interconnected challenges of building more sustainable residential developments. The loss of green and blue spaces through urban development can hinder reaching climate change adaptation goals through the loss of carbon stocks and increased greenhouse gas emissions through both land and water systems. Urban residential landscapes can be designed to limit these effects, but this requires the participation from a variety of actors, including municipal planners, land developers and homebuyers, with various and perhaps competing priorities. The RISE project aims to motivate these stakeholders to work together to include climate change adaptation and mitigation options in urban residential landscapes, thus increasing the sustainability of residential developments.
Project team member and PhD candidate Adam Skoyles presented on the perspectives of stakeholders on the inclusion of natural blue-green infrastructure in residential developments and their benefits. Through a series of interviews with municipal planners and land developers, Skoyles’ research aims to understand how key stakeholders make decisions regarding natural features in planning applications for residential developments and whether climate change considerations factored into their decision-making process. Through his results, Skoyles has identified industry best practices and leverage points in the planning process to help inform the types of policies and actions that effectively promote the consideration of natural features in residential developments and their role in combatting climate change.
RISE team member and PhD candidate Adam Skoyles presents a slide during his talk at the RISE Symposium.
Co-Principal Investigator Dawn Parker presents her opening slide during her talk at the RISE Symposium.
Co-Principal Investigator Dawn Parker presented on the role of landscape design professionals and environmental not-for-profits in shaping urban development designs. New residential developments can result in major changes to blue-green infrastructure on developed land. In some cases, developments may result in major losses of tree canopy and wetlands and their associated climate and biodiversity co-benefits. In other cases, conversion of agricultural land to residential developments may provide opportunities to improve blue-green infrastructure and associated benefits. Through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with landscape architects and environmental not-for-profits, team member and PhD candidate Hazem Ahmed seeks to understand how the value of natural features in residential neighbourhoods is perceived when it comes to climate change adaptation and mitigation potential, and to what extent these groups influence policy-makers’ and land developers’ decisions on including natural features in residential developments in Ontario.
Project team member and MSc candidate Chenxi Liu presented on quantifying existing and future urban tree carbon and their co-benefits. Trees offer many environmental, ecological and social benefits and their characteristics are being mapped and statistically related to the provision of these benefits as well as their biomass and carbon stock. Historical approaches to estimate tree-biomass and carbon were based on destructive sampling methods. Our team’s approach presents a comparison of non-destructive approaches to quantify individual tree biomass and carbon through the virtual 3D reconstruction of trees using high-density LiDAR point cloud data collected using a remotely piloted aircraft. These reconstructions enable the measurement of tree characteristics that can be compared against in-situ measurements. Liu presents results from several sites of in-situ tree data collection that were conducted in tandem with remotely piloted data and related to several socio-environmental co-benefits.
RISE team member and MSc candidate Chenxi Liu presents a slide during her talk at the RISE Symposium.
Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Bruce MacVicar presents in front of audience members at the RISE Symposium.
Co-Principal Investigator Bruce MacVicar presented on the team’s research on the opportunities for using stormwater in residential developments as a resource for sequestering carbon. Increased surface runoff in cities has a negative impact on carbon sequestration by reducing the amount of groundwater available for plant transpiration and impairing the health of downstream water bodies such as wetlands, lakes and rivers. Urban stormwater management facilities, such as wet ponds or infiltration galleries, can likely mitigate these negative impacts. Our team’s approach is to develop a simple method to ‘score’ the impact of a residential development on stormwater and the potential benefits of various management strategies. This will be done through three steps: first, comparing flow runoff in rural and urban watersheds with and without stormwater management; second, survey and compare the types and designs of stormwater facilities in municipalities across Canada; and third, developing and testing algorithms to score the presumed impact of new residential developments with different stormwater management facilities.
Project team member and MSc candidate Liahm Ruest presented on the opportunity for stormwater management ponds to provide co-benefits by acting as biodiversity habitats in urban residential developments. As urban developments have expanded in Southern Ontario, there has been an increase in stormwater infrastructure solutions to help meet water quality criteria and meet flood mitigation needs. With reduced critical wetland habitat across Southern Ontario in the past century, stormwater ponds can act as both infrastructure for these residential developments as well as habitats for biodiversity. Ruest’s research looked at municipal stormwater plans and guides from three municipalities in Southern Ontario to understand whether stormwater ponds reflect the goal of protecting private property, protect aquatic habitat, or both. Ruest’s results show that stormwater ponds as infrastructure are prioritized, indicating a missed opportunity to incorporate urban green space values and habitat provision functions in residential developments.
RISE team member and MSc candidate Liahm Ruest presents a slide during his talk at the RISE Symposium.