Our research targets the discovery and development of multi-faceted solutions. Whether it’s through conservation, restoration or management, we are co-creating strategies to build the cities we want to live in. Cities that nurture both biodiversity and people, for a better urban experience for all.
We provide evidence for greening projects and policies that support climate change mitigation and adaptation, while conserving biodiversity and people’s access to nature. Our work is strongly grounded in ecology and wildlife biology, but we connect this traditional ecological knowledge to human wellbeing.
Biodiversity
We explore biodiversity, primarily birds and species at risk, the natural areas that support them and the novel risks they face in cities.
Ecosystem Services
A key value of nature in and around our homes are ecosystem services and the benefits they provide to local communities.
Urban green equity
Our work engages the social dimensions of cities to understand how we can build more equitable access to nature, for the benefit of all.
Our methods range from hands-on to theoretical. Techniques in our group include tagging and surveying birds, logging temperature, and measuring trees for carbon storage. We use advanced statistical models to explore and predict ecosystems and biodiversity within and across Canadian cities
Project lead Barbara Frei beside an ARU deployed to register birdsong in a Montreal park
Cities are often on the front lines of environmental change. This has created strong interest in finding urban greening strategies that benefit human communities and protect global biodiversity.
There is growing consensus that nature-based solutions, like the planting, restoration, and management of urban forests, can provide a variety of benefits to people, support biodiversity and ecosystem services in cities, and mitigate the effects of climate change. Urban forests include everything from larger treed parks, backyards, street trees, and small pockets of nature throughout our cities. Birds may use these areas during the summer for nesting, or throughout their spring and fall migration as ‘stepping stones’ to get to the vast northern boreal forests of Canada. With 70% of birds in Canada being migratory, its is likely when, not if, a bird finds itself crossing in or near a city!
To do our research we are using novel technology like Autonomous Recording Units (ARUs) which we use to record birdsong in spring and summer and help us discover just what birds are found in our urban forests. With the help of expert birders and AI we can identify bird species from 100s of hours of early morning sound recordings of birdsong throughout the city (without getting stuck in rush hour traffic!).
The resulting evidence base will provide researchers and municipalities what kind of urban forests are best for our feathered friends throughout the year!
This work includes multiple projects led by both ECCC (Frei) and Concordia University (Ziter) with graduate students Mackenzie Guest and Siena Blier - read more about our team here!
Synergistic efforts are required to address both biodiversity loss and climate change crises. Urban greenspaces can be important habitats for birds and even support some at-risk birds, yet we don’t know where bird biodiversity is concentrated in cities, which can hinder bird conservation efforts. We also don’t know if these biodiversity hotspots occur in the areas that best support carbon mitigation efforts. Mapping where biodiversity and carbon storage and sequestration hotspots overlap—or diverge—in cities can help urban land managers choose among sites for protection, restoration, or management.
We are looking at urban greenspaces across multiple Canadian cities from this nature-based solutions framework perspective, aiming to determine where bird biodiversity peaks and what areas best support carbon mitigation efforts. We also aim to determine how bird diversity differs between urban parks and public trees and how the differences between these two greenspace types influence these patterns.
This work is being led by Riikka Kinnunen - read more about our team here!
Throughout the world, migratory birds perform the incredible feat of migrating twice a year between the summer and winter habitats. In North America, the boreal forest and temperate forest of Canada are home to billions of birds each summer. To travel back and forth between their southern wintering grounds and northern breeding grounds, birds must face the gauntlet of a highly urbanized landscape across southern Canada and much of the United States. That means even Boreal or Arctic breeding birds that we associate with pristine wilderness must travel through cities or suburbs at least twice a year! In addition, research has shown that due to an innate attraction to light, migrating birds may disproportionally settle in natural greenspaces near or within urban areas.
We aim to better understand how long migratory birds spend in urban greenspaces, what they eat, where they go, and how can we better manage and conserve urban greenspaces as critical stepping stones during migration.
This work is being led by Barbara Frei & Ana Morales - read more about our team here!
Help us lay the groundwork for meaningful conservation partnerships with local decision-makers and organizations.
