Birkbeck Free Lecture Series: Urban Ecology

This year’s spring free Lecture Series,

Friday evenings 3^rd February 2012 to 16 March 2012 (no lecture on 2 March). 18:30, Lecture Theatre B33, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Most people in the world now live in urban areas, and the proportion is still growing, so urban ecology affects the welfare and amenities of an increasing number of people. Wildlife habitats in urban areas have been transformed: there is a great deal of disturbance, hard surfaces and private gardens predominate, and there are numerous wastelands. There are many losses and gains from built development. City climates are warmer and drier than those of the nearby countryside. Urban areas often provide the first foothold of invading exotic species. The conservation of urban wildlife needs to take these factors into account and also the heavy pressures on urban wildlife from competing uses for land.  After over 30 years of research and practice, urban ecology has probably come of age in the UK. These lectures will highlight what is distinctive about urban ecology and what we can learn from this.

3 February ‘Nature in Towns and Cities’, Prof. David Goode. The talk will provide a broad picture of habitats, and key species of British towns and cities.  It will also look at how processes  might influence nature within the urban environment. The talk is illustrated with examples of opportunities, constraints and the overwhelming influence of change, leading to the remarkable variety of urban ecology.

10 February ‘Wild London?’, Dr Ken Thompson. Maybe you don’t think London and other cities are particularly wild? But how wild is the countryside? The bits of countryside that seem to be the most ‘wild’ are not really very wild at all. To the animals that live there, urban gardens and brownfields are as wild as the Serengeti, just slightly smaller. This revisionist view has implications for what we choose to conserve, and how we conserve it.

17 February ‘Loving the alien’, Dr Mark Spencer. Non-native plants in London’s habitats are often seen as problematic. But, we remain ignorant about how to document urban plants, and countryside methods may not be suitable. We need to understand how environmental change is affecting in urban plant communities, both for London’s environment and the wider British landscape. This talk will be illustrated with results from the London Natural history Society’s Flora of London project.

24 February ‘Losses to garden habitats and their birds’, Chloë Smith and Dave Dawson.  UK cities have an urban core, but mainly are comprised of suburbia. It’s these private gardens that support most “urban” wildlife. Chloë will describe the composition of London’s gardens and recent changes there. Dave Dawson will describe birdlife in suburbia. Most species are reluctant urban dwellers, but some are found there in greatest abundance.

9 March ‘What a waste — what is the biodiversity value of urban brownfields?’, Richard Jones. Brownfields are often portrayed as being little more than bulldozed heaps of rubble, twisted metal and fly-tipped rubbish. But they are more floristically diverse than chalk downland, and home to more red-data-book and nationally scarce insects than ancient woodlands. In much of London and the Thames Gateway, the best areas are brownfields.

16 March  ‘Environmentally illiterate? Societal disconnection from nature in the city’, Mathew Frith. Cities are for people not for nature, but there is a disconnection from the natural world – not only a physical distance, but a metaphorical and psychological distance. Urban communities are connected to information, seeking to protect us from the outside world, but emulating the more attractive parts of it virtually with consequences for the values we place on nature, and how we choose to relate to it. What does this mean for our future relationship with nature?

See the ECSS website for the full brochure: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/environment/news/lectures

Contact Dave Dawson for further details: 0776 236 4648, or ecssoc@gmail.com