Denise Ellsworth: All right, and so, at this point i'd like to introduce our presenter for today Scott MacGyver, who is with the University of Toronto in Scarborough.
Denise Ellsworth: And I have followed his work for quite a few years, probably some of you have have also relating to solitary cavity nesting bees in and around the city was actually just re listening to scotts.
Denise Ellsworth: interview on the pollination podcast So if you don't know about the pollination podcast and your pollination fan you'll want to find that and Scott, was one of the first.
Denise Ellsworth: participants to be interviewed on pollination talking about his research, some of the wonderful resources they pulled together in Toronto really kind of leading the way with be conservation there in the city.
Denise Ellsworth: And scott's work with green roofs and green infrastructure, looking at walls and Community gardens other constructed infrastructure and its effect on these really, really exciting research.
Denise Ellsworth: So Scott i'm really excited to have you with us this morning and talking about those that green infrastructure, what we know about if it's helping wild bees.
Denise Ellsworth: He stopped my.
Scott MacIvor: Goodness there we go.
Denise Ellsworth: Great Thank you.
Scott MacIvor: Sir i'll start my video too.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, and i've been able to transcription fantastic.
Let me share my screen.
Scott MacIvor: And everyone can see that Denise you can see that okay.
Denise Ellsworth: yep looks great.
fantastic.
Scott MacIvor: Okay well thanks everyone for turning up on this virtual presentation that i'm about to give.
Scott MacIvor: And I want to just thank very quickly to Denise for inviting me to speak to you about this topic that is really important to me.
Scott MacIvor: And to our lab and to our city, as I hope to kind of explore a little bit in this talk.
Scott MacIvor: I talked title today is constructed green infrastructure to support wild bees and i'll talk a little bit about what green infrastructure is and what constructed green infrastructure is.
Scott MacIvor: And some of the ways in which we can find ways to support these along this as I call it the remnant to create a remnant to created continuum of urban green spaces, that we find in cities, supporting our diversity.
Scott MacIvor: So again, my name is Scott MacGyver i'm an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and.
Scott MacIvor: Why don't we get started minimize my face here in the corner.
Scott MacIvor: Okay, so we are research lab just quickly to introduce we refer to ourselves as the bugs lab by a diversity of urban green spaces and we're really interested in by diversity in cities.
Scott MacIvor: At the nexus of urban planning and design, and so we like to think about biodiversity conservation and cities cities as a means of supporting diversity but also how can biodiversity support us through ecosystem services that we.
Scott MacIvor: You know plan and with intention in urban green spaces and so, as I mentioned one way that biodiversity supports growing cities is through ecosystem services it's something that.
Scott MacIvor: Many different research topics have been explored of the last few decades, but the mechanisms by which we support biodiversity in cities connectivity planning green spaces and so on, may also in unintentionally support invasive species which could have negative impacts.
Scott MacIvor: We also do lots of work in Community engagement.
Scott MacIvor: Working with the public to collect data conveying our research and finding ways to enact the things that we do among the public and among policy and guidelines things which we'll talk about here's one example which i'll get into.
Scott MacIvor: But, of course, at the same time, growing cities require space for people habitation and circulation and all the important bits that make a city vibrant and functioning for people and so we're really trying to connect people to nature and make these various.
Scott MacIvor: The various attributes of the city.
Scott MacIvor: Both supporting biodiversity, but compelled and improved by biodiversity so just a little image of our lab pre coven and we haven't had a meeting with everyone in the lab in recent times, but that's that's definitely coming.
Scott MacIvor: So, as I said, one important avenue of our work is.
Scott MacIvor: explaining what we do and explaining why it's important to people and So here we are just out in high Park, this is a.
Scott MacIvor: Large park in the city of Toronto remnant folks savannah habitat so very sandy non compacted soils well draining and full of ground nesting bees in fact in this group here there are male.
Scott MacIvor: Graham nesting bees flying all around our legs of course milestones thing so nothing to be worried about, but what they're doing is waiting for a female to emerge where they can ball all around her and tried to reproduce with her.
Scott MacIvor: And we also do a lot of work in outreach with designers and practitioners so Denise mentioned that we do some work with green roofs but we're also interested in habitat creation.
Scott MacIvor: That creates opportunities for nesting substrates for bees and we'll talk a bit about that with some of our work with cavity nesting bees.
Scott MacIvor: So really trying to focus on, you know research that informs conservation research that can be.
Scott MacIvor: conveyed through outreach and research that inevitably leads to applied.
Scott MacIvor: solutions to the multifaceted and complicated problems that we face today and tomorrow in cities, including biodiversity loss and the impacts of urbanization.
Scott MacIvor: And here we are, of course, we're talking about these and pollinators so that's certainly what we do in the lab.
Scott MacIvor: It I don't need to explain this in great detail to this group, but we know that wild bees are important.
Scott MacIvor: We also wild bees are diverse with you know 20,000 plus species around the world in Canada we're up over 850 or so and we just keep adding.
Scott MacIvor: lots of different beast BC spread across the country and in the US as well, and why are these important well again.
Scott MacIvor: Just preaching to the audience here, of course, these are the most effective and a central point pollinators in all terrestrial environments around the world, I mean, except for Antarctica for now.
Scott MacIvor: Of course, the bees have a number of really cool attributes that they have evolved to be very effective at collecting pollen and nectar from their favorite flowers and similarly flowers have.
Scott MacIvor: You know evolved in a new number of structures from floral shape and timing and nectar production and height from the ground and timing of the year, and all these things.
Scott MacIvor: That we as humans appreciate as gardeners and as those that you know find nature compelling and beautiful.
Scott MacIvor: But of course we all know that much of that evolution of the the myriad of color and beauty that we see is to attract these co evolved mutualisms with the bees that visit them and provide that pollination service in exchange of course for food.
Scott MacIvor: One thing to note to have courses at wild bees are not managed fees, so, while these are those that are out and not being being managed or or maintained by us, so one obvious example are honeybees which are managed bees, you can see some.
Scott MacIvor: Large honey bee colony structures here on our campus.
Scott MacIvor: Again don't need to go into too much detail here, but as social bees, with the Queen workers and drones they're able to you know consume lots of food in the environment, but of course in environments that are.
Scott MacIvor: You know reorganize into conventional agricultural systems honeybees can be extremely valuable for example in this almond fields here.
Scott MacIvor: But really important to note, I think, in the context of why wild bees matter is some work by my colleague, James hung here that shows along the X axis, the proportion of visits by honeybees two different flowers species and the proportion of plant species.
Scott MacIvor: visited on the on the y axis here and what you see here is a large number of flower species out and in the world.
Scott MacIvor: aren't visited by honeybees at all there's there's lots of flowers that depends, specifically on wild pollinators and wild beast specifically.
Scott MacIvor: to enact reproduction of course there's lots of flowers that are visited almost entirely by honey leads, if you look along that X axis and that's a really great.
Scott MacIvor: space to conduct those kinds of research projects linking the impacts of honey bees to wild bees.
Scott MacIvor: And so, while these are important for that reason I said right there's lots of flowers out there that have visited only by well bees and there's 10s of thousands of wild bees.
Scott MacIvor: On the planet and many more we don't know about yet so if you look at this.
Scott MacIvor: diagram here this interaction network if, on the green side we have bees and on the orange side we have flowers.
Scott MacIvor: In any one environment, including urban environments these networks actually tell us quite a bit right they tell us about the the the species that are present in the.
Scott MacIvor: Environment right it tells us about which flowers different bees are visiting which flowers have multiple types of visitors which ones are visited by only one type of be.
Scott MacIvor: And all of these network linkages between the Green and the orange side here tell us a bit about the stability and perhaps even the quality of the environments.
Scott MacIvor: That were studying, so these kinds of networks are an important way that we assess habitat change with urbanization by looking at the changes in these linkages.
Scott MacIvor: Of course wild bees have innumerable different ecological strategies and behaviors it's really hard to narrow some of those down, but one that we often refer to are those that nest in the ground and those that nest above it, and in most environments from Ohio to Toronto will to Ontario.
Scott MacIvor: About three quarters or so of the species nest in the ground, and so you can imagine that, in a city, this is a group that.
Scott MacIvor: is potentially under great peril right we Pave we compact we till and we turn soil over, and this can have great impact to the nesting opportunities for bees.
Scott MacIvor: Of course we want to support flowers, but the nesting space is really critical as well, especially when you consider the diversity of these that we might even find in a city.
Scott MacIvor: Where all of those grab nesting bees have different architectures underground and there's some really amazing research that's been done over the decades.
Scott MacIvor: Looking at this nest architecture and you can imagine that you know, in the city, what we see with respect to urbanization is obvious, but we never get to see what's below ground, and this, of course, is a really open question in this study of urban be conservation.
Scott MacIvor: and the rest of the bs you know give or take i'm really reducing this down a bit here, but about a quarter of them are those above the ground either.
Scott MacIvor: Actually excavating a nest in a plant Sturm or renting the nest right finding a hole that already exists, so a common way that these do this is look for a beetle board holes out of wood and decaying logs and so on.
Scott MacIvor: But of course in cities we construct a great deal of Arc you know infrastructure, buildings and so forth, and nail holes and and holes in brick and mortar and so forth, can also serve as habitat for some species.
Scott MacIvor: um Why are these important, of course, also the they're important pollinators of food crops right so many conventional agricultural systems supply.
Scott MacIvor: breakfasts and lunches and dinners and so on, but in a city, food security is of increasing importance and connecting people to nature can be enacted through.
Scott MacIvor: Community gardening allotment gardening and food growing, especially in a city like Toronto, one of the most culturally diverse regions in all of North America.
Scott MacIvor: there's a great deal of interest in growing culturally appropriate foods and we know very little about the pollination systems of some of these foods in Toronto, and in Canada and so.
Scott MacIvor: That aside, in general, we also know that, while these are important to stay, you know maintain and sustain various.
Scott MacIvor: pollination systems and orchards and other crops system, so we can look this and see very clearly the most nutritious and colorful items on the plate our little are lacking in the breakfast without be pollination funny enough and, interestingly, even the milk right so in Ontario.
Scott MacIvor: A great deal of dairy cattle are fed alfalfa and alfalfa is a pollinator dependent crop.
Scott MacIvor: So.
Scott MacIvor: pollination for food aside diversity in the pollinators presence in environment plays a critical role in the food produced as well.
Scott MacIvor: And all this is showing here with tomatoes and also with pumpkins is that you get a greater yield of the crop or the quality of the crop improves when more different beast types are present Take, for example, of a pumpkin.
Scott MacIvor: You know or or or squash these flowers are open for a very short period of time and.
Scott MacIvor: By having a diverse pollinator community within a particular within this particular area, you can.
Scott MacIvor: be hopeful that many different kinds of be species are visiting of that single flower so each one of these dots is a single flower and.
Scott MacIvor: It representing seed said or or quality.
Scott MacIvor: What this is saying is that more different kinds of bees visiting that single flower will lead to a more effective pollination service.
Scott MacIvor: So if you had 10 visitors to a single flower you wouldn't want all of those visitors to be honeybees, for example, you'd want each of those visitors in a perfect world, to be a different species.
Scott MacIvor: And again, this is all very important because wild bees include threatened species right, so a recent paper just came out this past year.
Scott MacIvor: showing that globally 25% of wild be species haven't been recorded since the 1990s and some common groups have declined, and you know other groups have declined precipitously much, much more.
Scott MacIvor: So what we're seeing is you know uncommon species becoming rare rare species becoming locally extinct, and we have examples of this in Toronto, and the region.
Scott MacIvor: my good colleague sheila Cola, has been working on the rusty patch Bumblebee I do believe it might be presence still in Ohio in some of the.
Scott MacIvor: US states, but certainly in Ontario we haven't seen it in quite some time, and you know urbanization agriculture and some of the synergistic impacts of those processes.
Scott MacIvor: are presumed to have led to the decline of this an extra patient of this be and where I live, and especially with bumblebees because they're so cute and large and identifiable.
Scott MacIvor: Where we have very robust data on their presence and occurrence, and so we know that one of the next bumblebees that we are expecting to see leave our region is bombus trick law and so there's a lot of work going into this one down.
Scott MacIvor: Okay um let's narrow in on Toronto here, so this is a Toronto, where I live, and we are one of the largest cities by population size in North and Central America.
Scott MacIvor: and, interestingly in North America world so one of the greenest cities and upwards of 28% green space is captured.
Scott MacIvor: Through you can kind of see to the south of the city is lake Ontario to the north is the greenbelt, which is a land that's conserved from development that's larger than the province of Prince Edward island so it's quite large, although under increasing pressure.
Scott MacIvor: And you can see a trend sex going from north to south, these are ravines.
Scott MacIvor: which have been kept intact, since the 1950s, we had a massive hurricane that lead to large scale flooding and planning and policy that conserved these areas all through time and much of it has remained.
Scott MacIvor: And up near you University of Toronto Scarborough is to the North East right to the kind of.
Scott MacIvor: If you can see my mouse, but where this large green space is up here, and this is actually where canada's first urban National Park is located, this is the rouge.
Scott MacIvor: National urban Park, and this is an initiative happening across the country trying to bring conservation at a national park level.
Scott MacIvor: to people who live in cities, because it's easier for them to access, so of course with be declines, and a lot of interest in bees for pollination services and native plants and so forth there's been a ton of work in the city of Toronto over the last few decades, studying wild bees.
Scott MacIvor: Including finding new species to science right in the downtown core by my colleague Jason gibbs finding last year blossom fb item which it turned up actually is a kind of a cryptic be and found.
Scott MacIvor: much further than this, the city Center that's for sure.
Scott MacIvor: And we we've seen a great growth in the number of artists and other Community members outside of traditional academic silos engaging with bees and pollination their importance their diversity.
Scott MacIvor: And you know finding ways to connect people to these really cool and interesting native species, so this is a colleague Nick who does a lot of murals, and this is just one of several murals across the city.
Scott MacIvor: This one actually showing canada's are sorry toronto's official be species which all reference in just one second.
Scott MacIvor: So the city Toronto we're doing quite a lot, and we have a few other resources that we've been.
Scott MacIvor: Producing for the public, this is a book that's free to the public available in Toronto libraries is a hard copy but also digitally.
Scott MacIvor: it's called the bs of Toronto, and in it, we have a checklist of all the bs historically of the region we're currently trying to work on that as an update but upwards of 360 species.
Scott MacIvor: have been recorded from museum records and so forth from the region in this book to we identify areas for be watching where to find large aggregations of brown nesting these, for example.
Scott MacIvor: What to look for what to observe through the seasons, how to maintain your yard for bees introducing you to artists in Toronto that use bees in their work and, of course, a history of beekeeping and be research across our universities.
Scott MacIvor: In 2019 we had, and we have been working with the city of Toronto on a number of things guidelines and.
Scott MacIvor: Policy and such for years, but I want to specifically mention this one product which is referred to as the Toronto pollinator protection strategy.
Scott MacIvor: This outlines strategies that are intended to be put in place within the municipality like in various offices.
Scott MacIvor: but also to promote wild and native bees among the public, so giving them a number of strategies, this was passed unanimously by City Council back in 2019 and May.
Scott MacIvor: And on the cover of this, you can see, is our toronto's official be species egg a testimony very essence of the by colored eggs pass them on it's a very common be in our in our city often a nesting in people's lawns.
Scott MacIvor: And we chose this as toronto's official be because it's a very fairly dos i'll be and sisters or close relatives will nest in.
Scott MacIvor: You know nearby and you know watch each other's nest for parasites, or you know even enter each other's nest and so on, and we took that as an opportunity to convey you know Toronto, which is a city of neighborhoods This is very neighborly be.
Scott MacIvor: And this has been really productive for us because in enact getting the pollinator protection strategy and acted it kick started a program called pollinate to which is administered by the city.
Scott MacIvor: Which is a grant program that's offered every year and it offers community groups and organizations $5,000 to create a pollinator garden and our lab works with the city of Toronto and others to.
Scott MacIvor: Using research from our work in the city, which I hope to go into in a minute to perpetually modify and adapt the granting programs, so that we are ensuring the most effective approaches are being used okay.
Scott MacIvor: So in Toronto, like many cities across the world were grappling with this idea that.
Scott MacIvor: Urban urbanization and anthropogenic change has a negative impact on biodiversity, and I think we can all agree, and there are many, many studies that have shown.
Scott MacIvor: The impacts of urbanization on on wildlife and plant life, you know cities as hot spots for invaders you know sensitive species species, being unable to be supported in cities.
Scott MacIvor: pavement pollution urban heat island effect and so on, there are many reasons.
Scott MacIvor: That are very clear in the literature and in folks work that show that cities are a stressful environment for many species, so one hypothesis.
Scott MacIvor: For bees, of course, cities are stressor and we see a environmental filtering of species as a result of the changes to the landscape in which they they they survive.
Scott MacIvor: um it has been proposed, though, that for some species some text on the groups, including bees and there are other others as well, which we will go into today.
Scott MacIvor: That cities could actually be a refuge, so the you know the mosaic of urban habitats, the heterogeneity presented by public and private space.
Scott MacIvor: gardening and and aesthetic appreciation for nature, even in the dense urban core could promote.
Scott MacIvor: habitat opportunities for some species, especially when cities are surrounded by agricultural landscapes that are sometimes mono typically or having.
Scott MacIvor: You know the high pesticide herbicide usage and other usages and so on in Toronto, like all cities in Ontario cosmetic herbicides and pesticides are not permitted.
Scott MacIvor: um and you know when we start to look we start to see some weird stuff right so with respect to bees, which again is the focus of this talk.
Scott MacIvor: In cities we start to see them doing some what we presume erroneous activities or maybe adaptive activities So here we have leaf cutter bees at the top, using plastic shopping bags to make nest.
Scott MacIvor: Right and the bees emerged from that nest and on the lower panel, here we have a resident, be a native species of resin being mega kylie companion.
Scott MacIvor: That typically collects pine SAP here, we found it using a window cocking material and I first I thought it was gone and I did try it when I open nest but I assure you, it was not gone.
Scott MacIvor: And I assure you from the chemical testing that it wasn't fact window kochi so these strange behaviors that these are exhibiting in an urban environment.
Scott MacIvor: I mean here's another image of osceola Canaria a native mason be nesting in a metal tire room.
Scott MacIvor: And another example of a leaf cutter be nesting in a metal armchair you typically find in your backyard.
Scott MacIvor: Now, these are the same kind of chairs that people often bring to the beach, and they leave them in the sun and then suddenly your arm is burning because it touched the hot metal.
Scott MacIvor: Does this being know that it's going to get hot in August when it's brewed cells are feeding in in this, you know tubular nesting opportunity.
Scott MacIvor: Or, of course, I assume it wouldn't, but these kind of erroneous aberrant behaviors that may or may not be indicative of adaptation to this novel environment.
Scott MacIvor: are really quirky and we find very interesting in the lab in the context of cities, being a refuge right some of the things we do might support species that in a novel way.
Scott MacIvor: Now you know, there are some other important items from remnant not restored natural environments, that we have been able to glean and take those approaches in cities, an obvious one is restoration right, so increasing.
Scott MacIvor: Plant richness or diversity is a strategy that can support more different kinds of bs more different kinds of connections and that's stability that we were.
Scott MacIvor: Discussing several minutes ago, so this is just some work from one of the Masters students in my lab cecily irwin.
Scott MacIvor: who's looking at restoration projects under electrical hydro corridors in Toronto, and what you can see, is a number of different restoration techniques are taken and those that are.
Scott MacIvor: Older restorations that have more mature and diverse plants communities, we see more of these types of connections, even in the city Center.
Scott MacIvor: And this kind of brings me to the kind of second half of my talk and that's really starting to think about the urban green spaces that are present in cities and.
Scott MacIvor: How different, they can be right there's a myriad of different urban green space types going from you know remnant green spaces, that you know, have been put under conservation.
Scott MacIvor: restrictions or policy that ensures there's no development there, I mentioned the ravines.
Scott MacIvor: moving into areas that.
Scott MacIvor: are drained but are certainly deserving of restoration, you know anthropogenic impacts in cities, cause an impact of a loss of habitat, but we all know and.
Scott MacIvor: You know what an exciting thing about this kind of work is that humans can be have a positive impact, to we can restore these areas and increase the habitat value, so we have remnant restored and.
Scott MacIvor: Finally, we have urban green spaces that are wholly created right, so they are habitat where habitat would not be otherwise in the urban Center so.
Scott MacIvor: We in the lab have focused quite a lot on green rooms and for a number of reasons which I won't go into too much today, but the city of Toronto has a greener by law construction standard an incentive program and it's led to over 700 green roofs in the city today.
Scott MacIvor: which presents a really cool opportunity to look at you know aspects of two and three dimensional urbanization connectivity and simply, the role of this like really novel and interesting habitat that is wholly designed.
Scott MacIvor: And so you can see that across the continuum of urban green spaces, we have variation within.
Scott MacIvor: And across urban green space types and again thinking about cities as a refuge and the heterogeneity the mosaic like elements that cities may provide this is really Indicative of this range and what we do know is that more different kinds of habitat.
Scott MacIvor: presents more different kinds of niches and this can create more opportunities for different species that are under less competition or or there's more complementarity there.
Scott MacIvor: So I mentioned urban green spaces, but I will you for the rest of this talk have urban green spaces and green infrastructure us just simply a synonyms of each other.
Scott MacIvor: green infrastructure in in the context that we studied is really just natural features, you know vegetated features such as remnant habitat restored green spaces that are within or round urban developments and they support ecological services so very broad.
Scott MacIvor: And you can see from this image that in you know, in a slice of the city that there are a myriad of different types, all within walking distance of one another.
Scott MacIvor: I mentioned remnant habitats and I also mentioned the rouge national urban Park, this would be an example of a remnant habitat, one that is protected from urban development and supports.
Scott MacIvor: Species often more unique and special a species, we do definitely find a few general of be in rush park that we don't really find anywhere else in the city.
Scott MacIvor: And we also have these restored green spaces, as well as I mentioned the Hydra record or the metal way, this is a project we are working on to restore different sections.
Scott MacIvor: With the Toronto and region conservation authority it's a really cool project.
Scott MacIvor: The Meta ways actually again electrical hydro cord or that runs from the Center of Toronto, all the way for those of you that know your Canadian geography, to get know cut back it's pretty far.
Scott MacIvor: And the section that we refer to as the Meta way is that which connects the downtown core of the city.
Scott MacIvor: All the way to the rouge national urban parks so there's linear bike corridors and great circulation, that if you are somebody who can ride a bike for two and a half hours you can work your way, all the way across the eastern region of the city.
Scott MacIvor: And finally, and perhaps important for this talk is a constructed green infrastructure, so this is kind of nested within.
Scott MacIvor: green infrastructure it's a suite of type of urban green space, and these are engineered features that have natural elements and so really it's again, as I said, creating habitat where habitat would not be.
Scott MacIvor: Due to the urban condition right so here there's a few examples from a recent but little book chapter.
Scott MacIvor: And the image was produced by a former student vicki and you can see here we've got green roofs and green walls and street tree parapets and bio swales, these are all great examples of engineered or constructed green infrastructure.
Scott MacIvor: And really just to hit that home constructed green infrastructure is is where traditional protection of remnant habitat or restoration are limited right so we're creating green space, and this is.
Scott MacIvor: Actually kind of exciting is one of the things that got me really interested in landscape architecture and urban planning is having these these you know spaces that.
Scott MacIvor: I mean often are designed to shed water right thinking of streetscapes or building rooftops we're actually flipping that narrative right we're trying to capture the water support.
Scott MacIvor: The plank community that absorbs the water admits it is about transpiration that water can be siphoned into cisterns that are used for other purposes, and one of the outcomes is.
Scott MacIvor: vegetation and substrates and.
Scott MacIvor: they're in is the opportunity to create more biodiversity, so this is that our native child and family service Center right in the downtown core of trying to write a young in college if anybody does the city.
Scott MacIvor: And you can see here that we actually have this is a there's a three sisters garden and a sumac grove and a variety of other culturally appropriate and indigenous lead design around plantings from from Ontario as a really cool site.
Scott MacIvor: So, as I said, water capture water storage, I mean there's a number of other reasons why constructed green infrastructure is valuable over and above conventional infrastructure, the paved.
Scott MacIvor: streetscape or the asphalt roof right green infrastructure is going to support all of these items here and I won't I won't describe them today, because of course we're focusing on this last point here urban biodiversity.
Scott MacIvor: And we have done some work in terms of taking a more of a Meta analysis approach, this is with our postdoc Alex phyllis Ola.
Scott MacIvor: Where we looked at green infrastructure, all in in the literature and cities all over the world.
Scott MacIvor: And we compared the biodiversity benefits of green infrastructure to conventional great infrastructure right so comparing a green wall to a bear wall or during a green roof to a bear roof, and so on.
Scott MacIvor: And what you can see if you go all the way to the bottom here that little diamond shape is on the left side of the dotted line and again without going into how this was actually.
Scott MacIvor: created this Meta analysis i'll just say that if it's found on the left side, where the green infrastructure.
Scott MacIvor: Item is found what that means is that green infrastructure supports biodiversity more than conventional infrastructure great that's what we would hope that you know, putting substrate and plants would support biodiversity more than.
Scott MacIvor: You know, a bear wall.
Scott MacIvor: However, when we look at comparative studies that compared constructed green infrastructure to the natural area analog right, and you can see what those analogs look like alongside here natural versus retention pond.
Scott MacIvor: roadside versus forest and so forth, we do find that, in general, natural features support biodiversity, better than constructed green infrastructure.
Scott MacIvor: And again, that makes sense, thinking about substrate depths age and all the other important features of remnant or restored areas in cities, compared to constructed green infrastructure, so there certainly is a continuum of biodiversity benefits.
Scott MacIvor: And so, getting green infrastructure is where we do most of our work, and you can see here that in this book chapter with my colleague Kelly K sick.
Scott MacIvor: We looked at different drivers of.
Scott MacIvor: You know from from a biotic to biotic factors that might influence the utility of green roofs in particular for biodiversity, and you can see a number of factors are listed here.
Scott MacIvor: You know the ones that i'm going to focus on today and the ones that we've been looking at is the vegetation, so the types of flowers, the amount of those flowers that are used in the particular design.
Scott MacIvor: And second the connectivity of those environments right so what's the surrounding land use is it in a denser urban core is surrounded by large buildings and the heights right so green roofs are vertically isolated from ground level, and if you are.
Scott MacIvor: A.
Scott MacIvor: taxonomic group is low, mobility, a greener may not serve you in the city and so conveying that Greens have biodiversity benefits for a wide range of species is simply not true.
Scott MacIvor: And animals need to get there, and so height will have an impact, so we're going to talk about those two items moving forward, I will say quickly that we have really started to focus on temperature and how.
Scott MacIvor: Extreme temperature events extreme warming events that we find in cities.
Scott MacIvor: As a result of climate change and the urban heat island effect interacting is something we're really interested in moving forward with how it affects the behavior and other things, but i've left that off today, in fact, most of the rest of the talk i'll be talking about.
Scott MacIvor: Some of the studies that we have completed, but actually several things that we've never presented before and are still in prep.
Scott MacIvor: So one of those is some work by our undergraduates Shannon Underwood and what she was able to do is study be communities and flies on last so i'm just going to show you the bees and all of them together here as pollinators.
Scott MacIvor: On roofs of different heights and have different blooming periods, so what we found is when she went out and surveyed over a year weekly from.
Scott MacIvor: I believe, eight different sites what she found was that be visitation declined with roof height, you can see the negative trend line here.
Scott MacIvor: And what what she did find is that it increases flower species richness so often on these green roofs and these are very shallow rocky substrates that support very few different kinds of plant species.
Scott MacIvor: The blue coloration here on.
Scott MacIvor: The graphic to the right shows the bloom display or the density of blooms of seed them, which is a succulent plants not native to North America, the species that are used on green roofs and you can see that the pollinator visits track the bloom display the floral display.
Scott MacIvor: The Teal color is a second species that we planted in Rebecca herta which again is a is a plant that can survive and pretty rough and tough environments native species.
Scott MacIvor: And what we found is an increase in particular among bees in sites that included that Rebecca so.
Scott MacIvor: By inter planting different kinds of species in and even in this case going against the grain, so to speak, because.
Scott MacIvor: The Green roof industry really focuses their projects on the seed them succulent plants that bloom in the blue period as you see, by intermix in different species, we can greatly increase the value of green roofs in particular.
Scott MacIvor: For for pollinators so what we've been able to show with this work and some of the other work that i'll show you in a SEC and and promote to the city is that we should be focusing habitat creation.
Scott MacIvor: On green roofs for those that are low to medium rise sizes, so not high rises we're even putting green roofs.
Scott MacIvor: You know 50 6070 stories up because it's it's required by law, now that may not be so suitable for habitat value and with our incentive program could we possibly incentivize roofs that are lower, to the ground.
Scott MacIvor: incentivize them at a higher rate, so that we can get more habitat value out of those projects.
Scott MacIvor: And we've done some also some work looking at being nesting activity on green roofs and we found again that the amount of bees that colonize.
Scott MacIvor: Green roofs declines with building height as well, and again bees, of course, they will visit flowers at the tips of trees so it's not real to think that a B may go up right.
Scott MacIvor: Even 10 2030 meters, we have found bumblebees forging 26 stories up, and so there is some.
Scott MacIvor: Certainly it's not out of the realm of possibility that these would seek out floral resources higher but nesting resources seems a bit different and so there's still quite a lot of work that is needed here to look at.
Scott MacIvor: The be traits and characteristics that might be indicative of the kinds of bees, that would be beneficiaries of green roofs.
Scott MacIvor: and
Scott MacIvor: I mentioned the nesting activity and we've talked about cavity nesting these briefly, and that is a focus of our research in our lab these are that native resin be three females right here in this image mega kylie companion all constructing this pine SAP right now, and I mean.
Scott MacIvor: As many be know that wild solitary bees every female has her own queen she makes her own ness.
Scott MacIvor: laser own eggs clicks on food and so these be hotels can be quite useful for.
Scott MacIvor: Understanding the ecology and diversity of cavity nesting bees, not just with the nets and identifying what flower they went to but a myriad of other information, including.
Scott MacIvor: nest size and reproductive fitness parasites nesting material and the food that they collect as well, so these have been really useful for us over the years.
Scott MacIvor: This is just from a previous project we've been setting these up in from 2011 to 2013 across the city and then we've been repeating this work with my student Madison Marshall.
Scott MacIvor: If from 2018 to 2020 so those data are forthcoming, and this is just some images of the city of Toronto, and where we've set up nest boxes or be hotels over time.
Scott MacIvor: And the graphic on the right, shows the amount of impervious surface and the species richest that we found in the the be hotels.
Scott MacIvor: At each of those sites so it's pretty scattered and, in general we don't find strong relationships with urbanization with cavity nesting bees.
Scott MacIvor: Again, these these nest and nail holes and brick and mortar and might be finding refuge in our gardens and plan stems and so on, maybe less effective than ground nesting bees and that work is still yet to be done.
Scott MacIvor: I will say quickly to the these maps were produced by our PhD student Garland show.
Scott MacIvor: whose work I will show you in a minute.
Scott MacIvor: This is from that 2011 to 2013 data set we do see that across different types of green infrastructure that there wasn't a lot of difference in abundance.
Scott MacIvor: Because even on rooftops there were some non native be species that did particularly well.
Scott MacIvor: But we do find that species richness declines, with a constructed green infrastructure type right, so there is variation with different types of green infrastructure and the be communities that visit them.
Scott MacIvor: We also found that, especially with the be hotel research that non native species are increasingly overrepresented and this could be.
Scott MacIvor: Because mega cali roots and data, as Mr lessons and a few others are very gregarious and can nest in more dense nesting arrangements that we find in be hotels.
Scott MacIvor: It could be the materials that we use and be hotels that are less attractive to native bees, so it could be the next box itself or it could be the landscape, we know that cities are generally over represented by non native plant species.
Scott MacIvor: And it could be the case that non native bees species also find a home in cities.
Scott MacIvor: And in such a way that's just that much better than native species so more different kinds of sampling methods are needed, but I will say that even in Toronto, where there are 360 odd species of be.
Scott MacIvor: The vast majority of them are native species that's such an interesting quirk I find about urban environments is the the plant assemblages can be quite non native and even invasive whereas many be species, we find in cities, more often than not, or native species.
Scott MacIvor: However, we have had some issues with this, in particular with the.
Scott MacIvor: Commercial growing of be communities through be hotels and large insect hotels and then selling those sell the the bees across state lines, and possibly even across.
Scott MacIvor: international boundaries right so from us to Canada from Europe to Canada and so forth, it doesn't take much work to find number of producers online.
Scott MacIvor: FC to eBay and so forth, that are selling cavity nesting bees to help you create biodiversity in your backyard.
Scott MacIvor: don't do this i'm create habitat and really try not to introduce these by simply buying them online.
Scott MacIvor: there's a lot of unknown consequences that we're just starting to understand it's very hard to track This, however, I will say that in Toronto.
Scott MacIvor: A be that has become invasive and quite problematic through the US we've now learned in the past few years that it has arrived in Canada and.
Scott MacIvor: Our lab was among the first to find these bees, in particular in the city and even in the hotels, so we want to avoid moving these bees around, despite the fact that it looks like this one has made it.
Scott MacIvor: So a few more few more things I wanted to talk a bit about before we wrap up Garland shot and next Sue can to PhD students in lab were very.
Scott MacIvor: Important researchers on this project, where we looked at the be species that we find in the be hotels across the urban environments and you can see, to the left, that there is a.
Scott MacIvor: A 250 meters spatial scale there's a strong negative correlation across our sites with impervious surface and tree covers so where there's more impervious surface there's less tree cover and vice versa.
Scott MacIvor: And what we find is when we look at the traits of the beast species that we find in this boxes, we actually find interesting patterns, where.
Scott MacIvor: Bees based on their traits are being sorted through the urban environment, so these like high less.
Scott MacIvor: The small masterpiece that secrete their own nesting material they don't have to collect any nesting material right, so their grocery list is much shorter.
Scott MacIvor: they're able to persist in the urban environment, better.
Scott MacIvor: than some other beast species, for example, larger leaf cutter bees that may have one or two or three different kinds of materials that they need to collect to make their nest.
Scott MacIvor: We also see exotic the art non native bees exotic fees being over represented in more urban areas and native be species.
Scott MacIvor: being more represented in more natural areas, so a lot of really cool patterns in here, I will say with one caveat that wasps are included in this figure, but I look out of the discussion, for now, but happy to talk more.
Scott MacIvor: You can see some of the diet stuff being spiders and things like that.
Scott MacIvor: We have related, of course, as I said, leaf cutter bees generally need me to be around four different sources of green space.
Scott MacIvor: From that last figure and it's true right leaf cutter bees, they of course are pollinating flowers that we plant in our gardens and our cleaners, and so on.
Scott MacIvor: But their nesting requirements may not be served correctly in the kinds of green infrastructure that we create in the city.
Scott MacIvor: here on the left, you see lots of different leaf cuts in all different kinds of plants and what we did a few years ago is take the leaf material from the nest of leaf cutter bees.
Scott MacIvor: and use DNA barcoding to identify those flowering plant species, and it was quite eye opening to see the diversity of kinds of plants that leaf cutter bees are willing to collect but it's still.
Scott MacIvor: showed to us that a lot of the plans that we use that are used by leaf cutter bees to make their nest or not those being planted in our pollinator gardens.
Scott MacIvor: or in our green infrastructure projects so there's a lot more work that needs to be done to understand the nesting material requirements of bees in our cities.
Scott MacIvor: And i'm.
Scott MacIvor: Getting to the end here and I get i'm kind of showing a whole bunch of different stuff because we're big lab and working on number of different avenues around the diversity of the city.
Scott MacIvor: One thing that's really troubled us with the literature when implementing pollinator gardens or green infrastructure and linking be effective urbanization.
Scott MacIvor: Is urbanization is always measured in two dimensions it's done by aerial imaging where we collect the amount of building footprints and road footprint and so on.
Scott MacIvor: When, in fact, we know that cities are three dimensional right and there's a building footprints that you know can create a massive barriers and.
Scott MacIvor: For for forging these for these nesting and so on and so what we have been working on is a collecting lidar data from our city and we've been.
Scott MacIvor: actually been able to map all the building volumes and all the tree volumes for the city of Toronto, and then identify.
Scott MacIvor: areas in the city where there's low 2d urbanization and high 3D urbanization like an area of high lots of condos.
Scott MacIvor: or areas with low to art low 3D urbanization and high 2d urbanization so maybe like industrial parks, and these are different, but using a two dimensional metric that wouldn't be captured.
Scott MacIvor: And so what we've looked at is building volume building elevation the number of mid to high rise buildings and building shape index and look at the relationships with a two dimensional urbanization and you can see it's not a linear relationship here.
Scott MacIvor: From these four graphics on the on the right here, and in fact when we take that cavity nesting be data set I mentioned earlier on, that we didn't find any relationship with urbanization.
Scott MacIvor: But when we look at three dimensional urbanization we do find a negative relationship for be diversity with building volume.
Scott MacIvor: And you know it is, as I said, somewhat intuitive to think that these would be impacted by.
Scott MacIvor: A complex building arrangements and so next up we're really interested in the composition configuration of buildings, to look at those impacts on pollinators where we find them and pollination services.
Scott MacIvor: So just to kind of wrap up constructing green infrastructure it works, we find these on green rooms in our street trees and our urban parks and then our Community gardens.
Scott MacIvor: But absolutely more work is needed, as always right.
Scott MacIvor: One element that we have been talking a lot about in Toronto is areas of conflict between human needs and biodiversity goals so sometimes things like decaying would may not be that attractive to some people.
Scott MacIvor: But this really promotes nesting opportunities for bees moaning right we've seen a lot of discussion around moving in the last few years across North America.
Scott MacIvor: The regimes of mowing and when and how to do it, and this really does need to be effectively understood in our remnant to restore to created continuum of urban green spaces and lastly.
Scott MacIvor: More planning needed to connect green infrastructure to connect the construct in green infrastructure with the remnant restored core doors.
Scott MacIvor: understanding how connectivity can serve as an opportunity for biodiversity, but in ways that do not increase or enhanced invasion, but this is a very interesting dichotomy to explore as well.
Scott MacIvor: and also more precision in the resources and understanding the resources available, so I mentioned nesting material, you know that's a whole other story, but one other way that we've been looking at this is using drones and machine learning so we've been able to train.
Scott MacIvor: US collect data sets by flying drones over areas within our remnant and restored habitat types in Toronto.
Scott MacIvor: and identify flowers and build training data sets so that we can fly a drone over an area that's 20 meters by 10 meters or 50 meters by 50 meters and capture all the available flowering.
Scott MacIvor: species in their abundances, of course, in a dense urban Center where there's lots of private land, this will be a little bit harder but.
Scott MacIvor: Working out these mechanisms and the models that we use to run these simulations now will serve us when inevitably there are more opportunities to fly.
Scott MacIvor: drones on green roofs are in people's backyards and so on, to try to capture these data, of course, this is very time consuming normally as people going into subsets of plots and trying to extrapolate much larger in terms of the habitat quality or floor resources available.
Scott MacIvor: OK, so the remnants of created habitat continuum in cities, you know it includes green infrastructure to construct and green infrastructure.
Scott MacIvor: And what we really need to be focusing on his actions that support the species of concern not just common non native species, when we put a bee hotel out.
Scott MacIvor: Are we just supporting species that don't need more help, so to speak.
Scott MacIvor: More flowers right all everywhere, all the time that's certainly something we've learned through decades of restoration of natural agricultural areas.
Scott MacIvor: Bringing that into the city is critical and having the expertise to maintain those environments is critical.
Scott MacIvor: And also, of course, meeting to understand the role of nesting material and nesting locations.
Scott MacIvor: In our urban green spaces and even integrated into constructed green infrastructure in ways so that we're not promoting what we call be washing which is similar to Greenwashing but it's you know conveying the.
Scott MacIvor: habitat creation or opportunities that one is doing to support these inevitably not doing that correctly.
Scott MacIvor: The surrounding landscape matters right so remnant habitats are going to be better than restored and better than created when it comes to.
Scott MacIvor: Supporting more different kinds of be species and this element of the three dimension, which is in fact almost completely ignored and for a lot of reasons, the data is not easily available and a lot of places.
Scott MacIvor: will have an impact on on bees and pollination services, and this needs to be considered more carefully.
Scott MacIvor: And really it's just it's easy it's easy to go forward right it's easy to destroy restored habitat and create the green roof and say.
Scott MacIvor: Oh well, we still have that amount of green space it's a lot harder to go backwards right so constructing green infrastructure is not an argument.
Scott MacIvor: For the destruction of remnant habitat or green spaces, where restoration as possible, so we really need to be thinking critically about conserving our green space and cities and living, you know, in harmony.
Scott MacIvor: And we've been trying to do that again through our Toronto ravine strategy, which supports our veins the Toronto green standard, which is a very progressive and.
Scott MacIvor: Well, looked at around the world sustainability requirement guidelines for development trial and I mentioned our greener by law to that's been very successful so just to end Jane Jacobs who's been a huge you know influence on on my work in my life, she moved to Toronto in the late 60s.
Scott MacIvor: And it's important urbanus for a whole bunch of reasons, we can talk about that later, but you know ordinary people are capable of wonderful things without even knowing they're doing wonderful things.
Scott MacIvor: And I think that's a really important message in an era of extreme ECO anxiety and misunderstanding of what we as individual people can do to support.
Scott MacIvor: Nature and the beauty that we appreciate and i'm not going to go through this beat for lack of time, but my great colleague mile around send wrote a paper, a few years ago on environmental filtering in cities and talking about how all of these different urbanization processes impact.
Scott MacIvor: Biodiversity, however, this human facilitation factor people planting flowers right gardening taking time observing the bees around them and talking about it with their friends.
Scott MacIvor: can have a really important positive impact for for bees and pollination, and so I encourage you all to think globally but also individually, what we can do, and not be.
Scott MacIvor: You know shrouded or affected by this ECO anxiety that we all are experiencing today so here's all the references I used, and if you are looking for any of these papers, please contact me i'm happy to share them with you.
Scott MacIvor: And I just have some acknowledgments and number of participants in the citizen science work park staff and managers buildings love me getting up on the rooftops.
Scott MacIvor: My PhD supervisor way long ago now Lawrence packer amazing mentor and a number of students that have contributed to the work in our lab and I just want to say thanks so much for listening and i'll take questions if there are any Thank you so much.
Denise Ellsworth: I think great Scott Thank you so much, so many great ideas and projects you're working on, I wonder how you can juggle all that a lot of different.
Denise Ellsworth: expertise that must come together in your lab to to do all that work so really exciting I love that you're talking about the be watching areas in Toronto, and then you you blew my mind with the be washing concept so.
Denise Ellsworth: very interesting and also the tree Volume I thought that was great.
Denise Ellsworth: um so folks we are on the hour, if you need to hop out I know Scott would appreciate it Thank you in the chat box, but we're going to go ahead with some questions here and we will have those posted with the recording got lots of good questions.
Denise Ellsworth: And so you know kind of all this week we've talked a little bit about the honeybee vs wild be kind of dynamic and just wondered your input, do you think the honeybee is becoming a threat to native bees.
Scott MacIvor: um I think that.
Scott MacIvor: You know honeybees have been kept for a very long time.
Scott MacIvor: In North America.
Scott MacIvor: And it is certainly possible that there is like a bit of an invasion leg, so to speak, right when there's a critical mass of hives within a particular region.
Scott MacIvor: Especially those that are sensitive absolutely not only from competition for floral resources which may not be as big of an issue in a city where there's lots of floor resources.
Scott MacIvor: But some of the more interesting work we've seen with respect to pathogen transmission and honeybees as vectors so.
Scott MacIvor: I think it's something that is deserving of a lot more and understanding, but what I will say is some of the strongest advocates for wildlife conservation are beekeepers.
Scott MacIvor: And so I think it's more about working together and understanding densities best practices and an understanding that we need both.
Scott MacIvor: In this conventional agricultural landscape that we all coexist in, so I think that there's like all things that inspired me about this research on on pollination and bees is.
Scott MacIvor: there's a lot of open questions and there's a lot to be understood, but I do think that, yes, honey bees do have an impact on wild bees, just like many non native and invasive species do.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, great so i'm gonna ask you to take an item off my to do list I got an email just this morning among more than i'm sure to get between now and the end of the holiday season.
Denise Ellsworth: from someone who wants to buy the hotel and wants to know my opinion so i'm going to ask you the expert your opinion.
Denise Ellsworth: Of you kind of alluded to this a little bit, but maybe you can give us a nice elevator speech for those people who know that we're big fans and have questions about whether they should do this.
Scott MacIvor: Sure, so um I mean the first step is.
Scott MacIvor: understanding that be hotel supports bees and wasps right and wasps are great right the solitary wasps are involved in pest control from aphids.
Scott MacIvor: caterpillar's at deflator our crops and so forth, but also provide this important you know.
Scott MacIvor: maintenance of hyper abundant insects and environments right so be hotels support wasps to that's, the first thing the second is that not all cavity nesting bees use be hotels.
Scott MacIvor: Right, and in fact it's mostly a subset of these that include those that will mess in gregarious conditions on you know, on horizontal planes and use.
Scott MacIvor: be more flexible in the materials that they they use, and you know as you start to create these conditions, inevitably, what you're getting our species that are.
Scott MacIvor: More common more abundant in the landscape using these as a you know more nesting opportunities.
Scott MacIvor: You know, the important thing we don't know is how much nesting opportunities there are in a five by five meter area right it's very hard to put your mind in the mind of a B and try to envision that or figure that out.
Scott MacIvor: And so, on one hand, the hotels are great because it creates nesting opportunities.
Scott MacIvor: The question then becomes what's nesting in them and our our work in cities, definitely find that more native bees are represented, about half half bees are native half or non.
Scott MacIvor: But if you set up a hotel, I mean I saw some of the regions that some of the speakers here are some of the listeners are tuning in from.
Scott MacIvor: In more rural environments and you're going to get a lot more native bees.
Scott MacIvor: Because there simply isn't the amount of non native bees in a lot of those places we definitely find in cities or in more urban areas, higher proportion of non native bees.
Scott MacIvor: Then in rural or non urban areas so that's something else to consider and the last thing i'll say is, of course.
Scott MacIvor: Be hotels are educational and you can learn a lot from them, you can get up close and see you saw the video I showed seeing the bees work and in terms of engaging with these like amazing phenomenal creatures be hotels are fantastic for doing that.
Scott MacIvor: There are other things like oh parasites might get in and so on, there are resources out there.
Scott MacIvor: for maintaining them, and I would encourage people to check those out one really great one is called managing alternative pollinators.
Scott MacIvor: it's a free book if you just type in managing alternative pollinators PDF you'll find it and there's some great be researchers and advocates that that put that together.
Denise Ellsworth: Great thanks, so a question way at the top of the list has to do with artificial cavity nest and maybe your perspective on the best time of year to clean them and, like our who's overwintering in them, who are you going to disturb.
Scott MacIvor: yeah that's that is a tricky thing um the idea of cleaning them when do you do it.
Scott MacIvor: Bees Of course some depending on when you set it out and you may have captured bees that are active in the early spring like mason bees, all the way through to the summer visa are active in those time periods like leave kirby's.
Scott MacIvor: So there's never the right time to clean it because there's always these leaving or entering.
Scott MacIvor: And so you don't want to gym a pipe cleaner in there, or something and and and crusher be or or hurt one, and so my best advice, usually is.
Scott MacIvor: A be hotel designs that you can remove and put back clean.
Scott MacIvor: tubes in with designs, you can get paper inserts are lobbies is cardboard tubes which may not be so easy to acquire like we have to bulk buy a whole bunch of them, but there are many designs out there, where you can have inserts and so, if you know there's something in there.
Scott MacIvor: You can remove it and put it in a you know.
Scott MacIvor: brown paper bag, or something keeping it protected from the elements and then letting it emerged, naturally, in the spring, so.
Scott MacIvor: I tend to not want to jam things down these tubes I would rather replace but inevitably as use accumulates through time the scent of a lot of these.
Scott MacIvor: Bees and wasps and so on can attract parasites, and so I all I would say is, if you don't have a design like that I would maybe replace it every few years.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, so Peter asked Peter is an aspiring landscape architects and he wonders how much are biologists conservationist and like minded architect and planning professionals involved in infrastructure creation.
Scott MacIvor: that's a really good question, I mean.
Scott MacIvor: i'm sure in.
Scott MacIvor: Ontario there are similarities across many of the US states to in terms of developers making a lot of the decisions for us all right in a lot of contexts in the dense urban core, but I do think that there is an increasing awareness of the need to engage stakeholders in even you know.
Scott MacIvor: Institutional or commercial type zoning or certainly residential ones one strategy that's really helped us in Toronto.
Scott MacIvor: Is the Toronto green standard so it's really on the backs of the municipality, at least in our city and maybe there's a statewide organization and some of the States you're in i'm not sure, but.
Scott MacIvor: Creating a green standard that is the minimum expectation of developers to integrate into their planning.
Scott MacIvor: creates a space for ecologists landscape architects and so forth, to be brought into projects right so, for example, a new.
Scott MacIvor: Engineering building is being built at a local campus and it has to adhere to the Toronto green standard, and that means it has to have these different green elements.
Scott MacIvor: And it can be very good for a developer who's bidding on a project.
Scott MacIvor: To be able to say Oh, we have an ecologist on our team, or we are working with landscape architects, you know, have a vision of how this works and can do that site inventory and the pre and post occupancy of biodiversity and things like that, so I would encourage you to look at what.
Scott MacIvor: Policy and minimum expectations, there are on developers in your city or your region, and maybe start there to see where you where you fit in also speaking to landscape architects who work in this world.
Scott MacIvor: can be really great and that's how I got my start as I I just started talking to landscape architects when I moved to Toronto, and I love green roofs I love bs like what's going on here Oh, we just passed a greener fila perfect timing.
Scott MacIvor: So yeah i'd encourage you to check out what your the the city or the region expectations are.
Denise Ellsworth: Great thanks I do worry about creating habitat and cities, then it will create a general sink for wildlife populations over time.
Scott MacIvor: that's a really good question, I mean.
Scott MacIvor: I had more of like a glass half full type of person and I wouldn't think about the potential negative things when we are all obviously at like alarm bell moment for biodiversity conservation.
Scott MacIvor: city planning.
Scott MacIvor: Climate change adaptation to mitigation of and so on, right.
Scott MacIvor: i'm very much.
Scott MacIvor: A try don't don't try do right so get out there and try and do it and learn from it and adapt to it So yes, I think that there are instances where city design can act as a habitat sink, but I believe that there are more examples of the opposite.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, I really appreciate your positive perspective it's a breath of fresh air when there's a lot of ominous news out there.
Denise Ellsworth: let's end with some of your thoughts on ways to enhance Community gardens I know you've looked at Community gardens as well, maybe just some ideas and tips for getting habitat baked into Community garden spaces.
Scott MacIvor: I that's a great question, and I mean an interesting thing is a lot of plants grown and Community gardens aren't necessarily pony dependent right carrots and kale and things like that.
Scott MacIvor: However, of course, pollinators play an important role in seed set and so thinking about the perpetuation of Community gardens.
Scott MacIvor: Seed sharing we have CD Saturdays and Toronto, where everyone shares seeds and you know you go to the library and there's a box seats there and everything growing seeds that are locally adapted to our environment.
Scott MacIvor: Are free or publicly available.
Scott MacIvor: and promote the creation of you know heirloom seed sharing and so on, I really feel like seeds are a real opportunity to bake in the value of pollinators.
Scott MacIvor: Especially when we think about the context of food security, the other element that we are really interested in in Toronto is culturally appropriate foods and.
Scott MacIvor: I mean when you if you could take a day and walk from the Center of the city to the roof park.
Scott MacIvor: And we've we haven't done this, we took a car, but like we identify all the crops in the Community gardens.
Scott MacIvor: As you go further and further outside the city and there's turnover right it goes from more Mediterranean European herbes and so forth, as you go further into more Asian African types of crops.
Scott MacIvor: And we actually don't know a lot about the pollination systems of those in a novel environment like a city of Toronto, and so we often argue that.
Scott MacIvor: To support culturally appropriate food production, we need biodiversity be diversity, simply because we don't know what the best fits and matches are just yet so.
Scott MacIvor: I mean there's that element to, and I mean Community gardens are place making opportunities right you people go there, day and night meetings pizza oven whatever and.
Scott MacIvor: You know centering non food producing flowering plants and trees and shrubs in those environments to can be a really effective way to support pollinators as well.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, thanks Scott thanks so much I hope you've been able to look in the chat box lots of thank yous and kudos for all the good work that you're doing really appreciate your time with us this morning.
Denise Ellsworth: Everybody glad you could join in, we had a really great turnout today, and I hope you can join us again tomorrow or last day and pollinators in the city speaker series.
Denise Ellsworth: Again, thanks Scott.
Scott MacIvor: bye everybody Thank you so much, everybody, I really appreciate your attention.
Denise Ellsworth: Thank you.