Muir, Corinne Gwen (2021) Biodiversity and amenity in urban parks and greenspaces. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Parks and greenspaces have many important roles for urban populations including recreation, exercise, supporting biodiversity, air pollution reduction and flood mitigation. However, parks and greenspaces are an easy target for budget cuts as there are no statutory obligations for their provision or maintenance. Various strategies are being used in the UK’s cities to reduce the management costs of parks, for example reducing labour costs through less intensive management. There is a lack of understanding how these changing strategies and cost saving exercises will impact on parks, and the services they provide. What effects will these new management regimes have on parks and the benefits that they provide for people and wildlife?

These questions were tackled via three studies (as well as additional exploratory case studies), using approaches from life sciences, social sciences, geographical information systems and data science:

• The first study investigated how parks are managed in terms of mowing and planting schemes, and the effects that this has on a crucial ecosystem service, that of pollination. Local scale fieldwork results from the West Midlands were compared to national data. Pollinators were shown to prefer less intensive management.
• In the second study a national map of parks and greenspaces (Ordnance Survey, 2017) was compared to crowdsourced scenicness ratings (scenicornot.datasciencelab.co.uk, Data Science Lab, 2017) to investigate preferences for different categories of greenspace and management. More natural images of greenspaces were considered more scenic by visitors to the website ‘Scenic or Not’.
• The third study evaluated public opinion of different types of habitat/management through a national online survey using photographs. Respondents preferred the less intensive forms of management.

This research demonstrates that less intensive management in greenspaces can be preferred by both human visitors and wildlife. This information is useful to greenspace managers in planning cost effective management which is attractive to people, and supports biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Electronic computers. Computer science. Computer software S Agriculture > SB Plant culture
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Urban parks -- Great Britain -- Management, Urban parks -- Great Britain -- Planning, Urban parks -- Social aspects -- Great Britain, Parks -- Maintenance -- Great Britain
Official Date:	January 2021
Dates:	Date Event January 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Computer Science
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	McInerny, Greg ; Collier, Rosemary
Sponsors:	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	372 leaves : illustrations (some colour)
Language:	eng

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