AUGUST SEMINAR: Punching Above Their Weight, The Role of Small Green Spaces for Biodiversity in Cities

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This month's seminar features Dr. Kevin Vega and his work exploring the interplay between human action and biologically driven patterns in urban wildflowers and pollinators in Zurich, Switzerland. Much like The New York City EcoFlora Project, Dr. Vega conducted this research using community science. These community-based projects achieve two things: they reveal the importance of the distribution of small green spaces for supporting wild pollinators, while simultaneously bringing volunteers into dialogue about wildflowers in cities, their pollination, the role of design in ecological connectivity, and the perception of wilderness in a city. Dr. Vega's work also uncovered patterns associated with tiny green “islands” spread throughout a sea of concrete. These small spaces are shown to be instrumental in urban biodiversity provided that they are sufficiently linked together. Dr. Vega states that "While cities represent a system in constant flux due to human actions, they also present an opportunity to directly engage with and influence the system’s key shapers and drivers."

Dr. Kevin Vega was born in Bronxville, NY living most of his life in an apartment near White Plains. He loved escaping to the little bits of “wilderness” like Ridge Road Park or the Greenburgh Nature Center, but trips to the Bronx Zoo or Botanical Gardens were clear highlights and instrumental in shaping his passion for nature. He loves urban spaces, and the wilderness in and around them always held a special place in his heart and scientific interest. He then decided that he needed to study “real ecology” and spent the next years in South Africa and Peru studying species interactions and human disturbance. It wasn’t until he was finishing his Masters in Zurich, Switzerland that he realized his limited vision of ecology. It dawned on him that the importance of these questions of human disturbance and ecosystem functions aren’t limited to the “wild” places left on Earth, but rather are vital to making a wilder Earth through building better cities within which both we and the wild things can live. His doctoral and postdoctoral work have focused on working with the city to monitor urban green spaces and understand their capacity to promote biodiversity as well as the ways in which urbanization is affecting our soils, the bedrock of any conservation effort.

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