Emerging projects
Explore some other projects the lab is working on, which extend beyond nitrogen and phosphorus.
Green like Trees or Green like Money?
(2024)
with R. Tchoukaleyska
Green infrastructure is viewed as essential to climate change adaptation and mitigation, with work on municipal policies around rainwater gardens and flood retention parks, edible green infrastructure, and the potential for pocket parks, natural lawns, and ‘green’ amenities to strengthen biodiversity, provide public health benefits, and mitigate urban heat effects.
At the same time, a body of literature is emerging in geography and urban studies on the financialization of green assets, whereby green infrastructure is intertwined with economic development and real estate investment.
This project examines these tensions via the complex role of green infrastructure in mid-sized cities experiencing development pressures.
Urban stoichiometry
with R. Buchkowski
Ecological stoichiometry is the study of the balance of chemical elements in living systems. Of particular interest is how ratios of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, the building blocks of organic life forms, vary in different organisms and across different ecosystems. The drivers and impacts of these ratios go far beyond what ecologists often consider, hence why this field requires an interdisciplinary approach.
Interdisciplinary work focused on ecological stoichiometry is especially important in urban environments where humans are a dominant driver of shifting nutrient cycles. Empirical knowledge around urban ecological stoichiometry is lower than for other ecosystems, despite it being home to most humans and the disproportional impact urban spaces have on the flows of these chemical elements.
This project seeks to develop a stoichiometric database with London, Ontario as a field site.
with R. Laycock Pedersen
Hoofing it in the city (2024)
with R. Tchoukaleyska and M. Drecher
Green Infrastructure and Equity
A systematic review of the literature to uncover how (in)equity is currently measured in papers using the concept of urban ecosystem services and how we may do better.
Action Research vs. Transdisciplinary Research
with K. Benessaiah
A systematic review of the literature in both fields to elucidate how they connect to one another in scholarship, topic, and methods.
This project seeks to explore a trend in municipal policy: the presence of goats (and other ruminants) in dense urban areas, where their grazing acts as a form of naturalized landscape management.
We aim to better understand how such ‘re-’ introductions juxtapose with multiple urban sustainability priorities and policies and outcomes on the landscape.