Urban development, land sharing and land sparing: the importance of considering restoration

1. At present, there is limited knowledge of how best to reconcile urban development with biodiversity conservation, and in particular whether populations of wild species would be greater under low-density housing (with larger gardens), or high-density housing (allowing more area to be left as undeveloped green spaces). The land sharing/sparing framework – originally developed in the context of farming – can be applied to address this question. 2. We sampled the abundance of trees in the city of Cambridge, UK, along a gradient of human density. We designed different scenarios of urban growth to accommodate the human population predicted in 2031. For each scenario, we projected the future city-wide tree population size and quantified its carbon sequestration potential. We also considered, for the first time in an urban sharing-sparing context, the implications of habitat restoration on degraded urban green space. 3. We found that the density of most native and non-native tree species i...1. 目前，学界对于如何最优协调城市开发与生物多样性保护（biodiversity conservation）仍知之甚少，尤其不清楚在低密度住宅（搭配更大面积私家花园）与高密度住宅（预留更多未开发绿地空间）两种模式下，野生物种种群规模是否会存在差异。最初于农业场景中提出的土地共享/保护框架（land sharing/sparing framework），可用于解答这一问题。 2. 我们沿着人口密度梯度，对英国剑桥市的树木丰度开展了抽样调查。我们设计了多套城市增长情景，以适配2031年预测的城市人口规模。针对每套情景，我们均预测了全市未来的树木种群总量，并量化了其碳汇潜力（carbon sequestration potential）。此外，我们还首次在城市共享-保护框架语境下，探究了栖息地修复对退化城市绿地的影响效应。 3. 我们发现，多数本土与外来树种的密度……