The main correction for this type of mapping project would showing suburban and residential areas do have some ecological habitat value for bees. However, showing how much habitat value a residential parcel has is not simple, but subsequent student designers tried with other techniques shown in section 5.9, below.The goal for the studio students was to create an extensive poster emphasizing designing for bees in a city of their choice. The final project had them concentrate at the scale of up to a few kilometers or miles maximum. One of the best projects include Figure 5, which shows a regional bee habitat design for the SLO area. This student was careful to use both GIS land cover data for more precise habitat mapping as well as mapping information . In their map titled, “The Network Map”, they were able to precisely prescribe where to place new habitat for “pollinator usability” which in ecological terms relates to ensuring foraging habitats are close enough together for continuity between pollinator patches. This student also does a wonderful job demonstrating three simple design techniques in their category “Pollinator Pockets” which could be implemented at various landscape types. So, for example, with major streets, slim narrow planters could be installed; with residential areas, seed packet programs could be implemented; and finally with parks, plastic plant pot suitable foraging flowers could be planted in groups. All three of these design techniques add together for the desired result of increased pollinator habitat circuity and connectivity.
This design solution is akin to adding sunflowers throughout a town to bolster bee network connectivity, as seen in The Great Sunflower Project in Sonoma, California, which was very well received. Overall, Roa’s project is an outstanding example of assessing a city’s pollinator habitat and offering design solutions. This is the sort of spatial resolution landscape designers should be striving for to create bee habitat network plans. This project is a shining example of how bee or pollinator habitat analysis and design could be accomplished. Another final project worth discussing is a pollinator habitat project for densely urban, Glendora, California. This student opted to trace every portion of vegetation from an aerial imagery map using Illustrator . This process, at this scale was painstaking and took several days, but the results are fascinating. They were able to capture the distribution of vegetation through this highly urbanized area. We realized that even the proportion of green spaces were visible between neighborhoods at this scale . Moreover, this project helps to show the proportion of vegetated space versus hardscape in very urbanized areas. This project could have been stronger by identifying how far their focal bee could travel and/or possibly occupy habitat patches within this map. Additionally, this project lacks a vision that the previous one, Figure 5, showed for implementation in typical design situations. However, the attention to detail in mapping green space was outstanding and should not be overshadowed by these constructive criticisms.
Finally, this sort of mapping technique, if used in GIS could be very helpful for improving the urban pollinator network and quantifying existing conditions as well as potential habitat modifications. By applying landscape categorizations to real landscapes, it was possible to graphically demonstrate how bees perceive the greater landscape. Only then, once habitat deficiencies are identified can designers go about fixing habitat short-falls. How different bee genera experience the same landscape will also be important to understand and see spatially, as dynamic landscapes create geographic isolation or continuity depending on bee genera. Future studies should work to untangle how urban habitat performs; provides habitat for various focal bees.This research focuses on developing the field of landscape architecture to better aid in bee conservation design at multiple scales. My goal is to build resilient pollination landscapes for the future. As a profession we must invest in helping stabilize landscapes and their functionality or the effects climate change could be much worse. Climate change is causing ecological stress for bees, both in terms of environmental, including phenological, mismatches , but also in terms of increased physiological issues, including bee body temperature. Bees are keystone species and conserving them, saves so much more than just bees. Pollination functionality underlines the very basis for nearly all terrestrial ecosystems on Earth. Every day, landscape architects and designers create plans to change Earth’s lands and with every plant they choose, they either provide foraging habitat for a bee… or not. Planting designs need to serve functional pollination purpose, to feed the local fauna. Landscape designers, should put an emphasis on bee conservation now to hopefully preserve and prioritize pollination ecosystem services.
Strategic solutions to habitat deficiencies, education and also raising public awareness are all important for resilient landscapes. Now is the time to act. Its time to make great strides in educating not only the new generations of designers, but also, with the greater public. Through implementing designs that celebrate local pollinator diversity, biology, and ecology, we can help to support nature’s and our own, human, future as well.For the last decade or so, horticultural and landscape researchers have been developing sustainable California plant varieties and palettes. Most research on sustainable themes has been completed on low water use landscape plants, but more recently, wildlife friendly too. Field trials for future suitable plants have been completed to help identify, promote and produce climate suitable plantings . For over a decade the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden has placed a strong emphasis on using drought tolerant plants, regardless of their geographic origin, the published list being called “The Arboretum All-Stars.” Notably, many of these plants, of non-California origin exhibit traits which this research project has found are also attractive to and functional for foraging native bees. Importantly, this plant palette has been carefully crafted to first prioritize low water use, which is an essential quality facing California’s Central Valley future facing climate change . Consider that in similar urban butterfly studies, it is estimated that around 40% of native host plants which once existed in the California Central Valley habitat areas no longer exist where they once grew and exotic species now provide essential host plant habitat . Thus, it is inappropriate to attempt to eradicate all non-native plants, as many are currently native bee foraging resources. The non-invasive exotic plants that native bees currently use may provide important habitat resources in the future if native plants cannot survive extreme climate change, while the exotic species may be more resilient.Preserving and enhancing pollination ecosystem services are extremely important in landscapes facing great uncertainties with climate change. Ecosystem services are a tool which can be used to help buffer the negative effects of drought, extreme storms, increased or decreased precipitation. Pollination ecosystem services are infrastructure and essential not only for conservation, nature and biodiversity, but also for much of the food humans depend on . Between one-third and two-thirds of the food we eat is the result of insect pollination. Aside from that, the next top priority in California should be water conservation. While pollinator plant lists exist, it is important to explore their success in a real-world setting and examine which ecological aspects could still be improved upon. Ecologically, landscape design can be used to provide and promote bee habitat and connectivity of habitat.Tree death is a natural part of forest dynamics , nursery pots but increasing rates of mortality can result when climatic conditions exceed a species’ physiological threshold . Although directional climate change has historically resulted in shifts in the distributions of species and ecosystems , comparatively rapid shifts in tree distributions attributed to anthropogenic climate change have been documented on all six plant-covered continents . Recent research has focused predominantly on causal mechanisms of tree death, feedbacks to the climate system, and predictive modeling . Ecologists generally agree that trees and forests in temperate regions will shift to higher latitudes and upward in elevation due to warming trends . However, understanding how forests will behave at the ‘‘trailing ends’’ is limited . Stand development patterns following forest mortality events are of considerable interest because they indicate future structure and composition of affected forests, and the ability of these forests to maintain biodiversity and other ecosystem services .
Although widespread mortality events can have negative impacts to ecosystem services , there may be benefits that are also important for adaptation in the human dimension . A global overview of climate induced forest mortality provides a detailed assessment of events driven by climatic water/heat stress since 1970; few of these documented dieback events provide opportunity to examine vegetation changes that occur over a longer time frame. Yellow-cedar , a species distributed from the northern Klamath Mountains of California to Prince William Sound in Alaska, has been dying in southeast Alaska since the late 1800s with intensifying rates observed in the 1970s and 1980s . Recent research reveals a complex ‘‘tree injury pathway’’ where climate change plays a key role in a web of interactions leading to widespread yellow-cedar mortality, referred to as yellow-cedar decline . Prominent factors in this injury pathway include cold tolerance of roots, timing of dehardening, and regional trends of reduced snowpack at low elevations . Early springtime thaws trigger dehardening and reduce snow cover that insulates soil and shallow fine roots from periodic extreme cold events; this can lead to injury of yellow-cedar roots to initiate tree mortality, which is predominantly limited to lower elevations . Despite the extent of research on the mechanisms of decline, overstory and understory dynamics in declining stands are not well understood . The direct loss of yellow-cedar has important ecological, economic, and cultural implications; however, other changes are also relevant in these forests that emerge in response to decline. Researchers are just beginning to understand the influence of dead cedars on watershed nutrient export . Economically and culturally, yellow-cedar trees are important because they provide valuable products for Alaska Native communities and the forest industry . These coastal forests also provide forage for the Sitka black-tailed deer , an important game animal throughout the region. Since the 1980s, much forest-related research in southeast Alaska has addressed the implications of various active forest management regimes on habitat of this commonly hunted species and biodiversity ; aspects of this research centered on old growth habitat and the effects of land use practices, such as clearcutting or partial cutting on forage . To date, researchers have not addressed the effects of yellow-cedar decline on the availability of key forage species. Death of yellow-cedar and the shifts in plant community dynamics in forests affected by decline can have cascading effects on the human-natural system by affecting the ecosystem services these forests provide . We studied the process of forest development using a chronosequence to compare forests unaffected by widespread mortality with those affected at different time points over approximately one century. Considering size classes from seedlings to large trees across the chronosequence, our analysis of the conifer species populations at various life history stages, including death, documented changes occurring in forests affected by decline, and extended a view of forest composition and structure into the future. We hypothesized that: western hemlock and other conifers increase in importance as the contribution of yellow-cedar to the conifer community structure is reduced over time, seedling and sapling regeneration increases as yellow-cedars die and the canopy opens, community composition of understory plants changes over time such that shrubs increase in abundance, and the volume of key forage species for the Sitka black-tailed deer increases in forests affected by decline. Our study illustrates the long-term consequences for many plant species when a single tree species suffers from climate-induced mortality.Modern climate in the southeast region of Alaska is mild and hypermaritime with year round precipitation, absence of prolonged dry periods, and comprised of comparatively mild season conditions than continental climates at similar latitudes . Mean annual rainfall measured in Sitka and Gustavus, the two closest towns to the remote, outer coast study area, measure 2200 and 1700 mm, respectively. The high rainfall that occurs throughout the Alexander Archipelago, combined with its unique island geography, geologic history, and absence of fires maintain some of the most expansive old-growth forests found in North America.