Assessing the potential for multifunctional blue-green infrastructure in southern Scandinavia

More than half of the global population now lives in cities, and this is expected to rise to more than two thirds by 2050. The urbanization process is increasing pressure on the so-called green infrastructure in surrounding areas. Green infrastructure - such as forests, rivers and lakes - can be broadly defined as a strategically planned network of high quality natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features, which is designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. These services are diverse, and can be habitat for biodiversity conservation, green space for recreation, areas for hunting and fishing, and land for forestry and agriculture. However, while many of these demands can be integrated into the same landscapes, some demands come into conflict with each other. We need to understand the synergies and trade-offs between these potential uses to be able to be able to come up with realistic land-use plans for integrating multiple uses into the existing green infrastructure. In this project we have explored the ability of blue-green infrastructure near Oslo to provide multiple ecosystem services. The services we consider are wildlife (medium and large mammals), key habitats of high ecological value, recreation and forestry. In order to control for larger scale effects (i.e. the city influence extending beyond this intensive grid) we used additional more extensive datasets which have been collected under the frames of other, already funded projects. The study was conducted using multiple field methods and existing map data within a network of 75 study plots distributed along a gradient from suburban Oslo, through the agricultural matrix to the forests of Østmarka. The study plots were characterized by the extent to which it is influenced by human land uses and structures. Our main ecological indicator of wildlife use was the presence of medium to large mammals using camera trapping. We monitored recreational activity using camera trapping, and we gained access to anonymous mobile tracking data on people's use of paths and roads from Strava. Strava is an internet service for tracking human training using GPS data. In order to begin on exploring the relationships between wildlife, habitat and people for we invested heavily in a series of methodological studies to understand exactly how to utilise camera trapping data for studying mammalian communities (as opposed to single species). We also conducted a series of smaller analyses on specific aspects of this, using both originally collected camera trapping data and pre-existing GPS-telemetry data collected from previous projects in order to understand the ecological mechanisms. The use of pre-existing data was also necessary to study species like Eurasian lynx for example where too few records were collected using camera traps. Our work is still underway, but clear results have emerged. Firstly, the use of camera-traps to study entire mammalian communities is possible, provided that species specific differences in ecology are considered. Secondly, it is possible to study the space use of people using both camera traps and other digital data like Strava. Thirdly, people intensively use the entire study landscape, mainly for recreation. This was especially true during the Covid period when outdoor recreation increased. Fourthly, the wildlife species included in our study were all widely distributed throughout the landscape and in general showed little large-scale avoidance of either people or habitat modification. There were some species differences, for example moose showed a degree of avoidance of the most disturbed areas, but overall, the species showed an ability to use fine scale temporal and spatial adaptations that allowed them to coexist with humans in these very heavily modified landscapes. The implication is that there are no strong trade-offs between a diversity of human activities and the presence of the indicator wildlife species that we used in this study, at least within the range of parameters present surrounding Oslo. It appears that the major landuses of recreation, forestry and agriculture appear to be generally compatible with the presence of much wildlife, implying a high degree of compatibility between ecosystem service provision. Our participation in international comparative work however has shown that such findings may well be highly context dependent, although the broad scale issue of medium and large mammals showing high degrees of tolerance for human activity appears to hold with the exception of the most mobile species.

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As urbanisation continues in Norway there is increasing pressure on the green infrastructure - such as forests, rivers and lakes - in the area adjacent to the rapidly growing cities to provide multiple ecosystem services. These services are as diverse as habitat for biodiversity conservation, green-space for recreation, areas for hunting and fishing, and land for agriculture and construction. While some of these demands can be integrated into the same landscapes (synergies), many demands come into conflict with each other (trade-offs). Land-use planning is essential in order to manage these competing demands and come up with realistic plans for integrating multiple uses into the existing green infrastructure. However, for land-use planning to operate effectively it needs to be informed by an understanding of the synergies and trade-offs between multiple potential uses. These relationships are likely to be highly context specific, and therefore require area specific research. In this project, we propose to explore the ability of blue-green infrastructure (forests and their associated freshwater habitats) in the vicinity of Oslo to provide multiple ecosystem services, explicitly examaning the synergies and trade-offs between different synergies. The services we shall consider are wildlife (medium and large mammals, trout and salamanders), key habitats of high ecological value, recreation, hunting and forestry. We shall also examine the disservices caused by human-wildlife conflicts including vehicle collisions, carnivore damage on livestock, and the presence of ticks. The study will be conducted using multiple field methods and existing map / database data to assess the above mentioned ecosystem services within a stratified random network of study plots distributed along the gradient from suburban and periurban Oslo, through the agricultural matrix to the deep forest. End users from municipal and county level administration will be involved throughout.