Posts Tagged ‘wetland’
Integrating biodiversity into water sensitive urban design
Posted in Research by Virginia on June 19th, 2009
Water sensitive urban design is still at an infant stage and there’s been much research into integrating biodiversity values into water sensitive urban design. A model used to increase the water sensitive design of an urban area is through the use of wetlands. Wetlands can act as storm water treatment points whereby wetland plants soak up nutrients and metals from incoming storm water and discharge cleaner storm water back into the waterway. An aspect that is often missing when building these remedial wetlands is the idea of integrating biodiversity regimes into the construction of the wetland.
Wetland projects tend to concentrate on the use of native vegetation and the attraction of wetland birds as an achievement in biodiversity conservation. Whilst that goal can hardly be undermined, nor disagreed with, it is a question to ponder whether such a goal truly reflects the notion of biodiversity conservation.
In itself, biodiversity conservation is much like the term sustainability- vague, ambiguous and lacking a precise quantifiable form of measurement. For what does it truly mean to conserve something? In terms of urban biodiversity, the precise definition of conservation becomes highly problematic in that, to what extent do we conserve the environment? Do we try and restore the environment to a pre-urban settlement environment or to an even earlier era, for example, pre-European settlement? Therefore, in order biodiversity conservation to have some meaning, a reference point must be established.
The problem with many urban sustainability projects advocating biodiversity conservation aims is that many don’t specify what sort of biodiversity conservation they are aiming for, that is, to what extent, if any, are the projects aiming to restore the environment. Using wetland remediation projects as an example, many such developments have cited biodiversity conservation as a result of implementing wetlands, however it is not clear as to what they were trying to conserve. In truth, perhaps the particularities of what was conserved is not important and it’s perhaps the overall picture of a greater presence of species within an area which should be celebrated.
However, the issue of not having a clear idea as to what type of biodiversity conservation the project is wanting to achieve is the result of having species that may not be wanted suddenly appear in the neighbourhood. An example of this is the much maligned kingdom of insects represented by the mosquitoes and associated larvae. There’s been community concern over the spread of mosquitoes in wetland areas and the risks associated with that. As a consequence of community concern, there has been initiatives by local governments to prevent them from establishing. However, mosquitoes play an integral role in both the maintenance and as a provision of food in the wetlands ecosystem. Therefore, whilst the increase in wetland birds have generally been celebrated, the overall increase in lifeforms such as insects must too be embraced if a more holistic view of biodiversity conservation is to occur.