Biodiversity in the Geneva area: urban projects under supervision
© 2014 EPFL
The main purpose of the URBANGENE &
GREENTRACE workshop was to bring together people working in the context of these projects, in the field of the management and conservation of biodiversity in the Grand Genève and Lausanne urban landscapes, in connection with public health aspects. Short presentations (15 minutes) allowed partners to present the preliminary results and to illustrate the various aspects of current research, on which discussions developed. This helped to identify potential synergies and to consider new research, perspectives and collaborations.
The presentation of URBANGENE & GREENTRACE projects preliminary results was an opportunity to bring together research partners and involved public institutions (Grand Genève, city of Geneva, Geneva State). These results highlight in particular urban projects (neighborhood plans, road and rail connections) that affect many green spaces and that are likely to remove many dispersion paths for species. Often, even when connectivity is maintained, planned projects clearly reduce the size of green spaces large area, which is the dominant process influencing the decline and extinction of populations [see Rochat 2014].
After a description of the activities of the Grand Genève, Sandra Mollier, head of agriculture, nature and landscape projects, recalled the reasons that led the agglomeration project to co-fund research on the effects of the urbanization process on biodiversity in urban areas, in particular the relationship with public health aspects and with the quality of life for residents. In this regard, Dr. Idris Guessous, head of the Unit of Population Epidemiology of the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) presented the public health research conducted in urban areas under the Bus Santé project. He highlighted the contributions of spatial analysis of health data when it comes to detecting structures in the geographic distribution of risk behaviors [see Guessous et al 2014] and the integration capability of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) decisive in the development of association models between health and environmental data. Thereafter, Alain Clémence (UNIL) and Olivier Desrichard (University of Geneva) presented the first analysis of a questionnaire on biodiversity as perceived by Geneva residents who participated in the Bus Santé study and living along one of the 5 transects defined in the URBANGENE project. Interestingly, "health" is one of the terms spontaneously associated with "biodiversity" by respondents.
In connection with the URBANGENE task dedicated to the common toad, Beat Oertli (HEPIA) introduced the MARVILLE project funded by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and the Direction Générale de la Nature et du Payage (DGNP) of canton Geneva. This research has allowed to compare the respective behaviors of urban, suburban, suburban and rural ponds, and to evaluate their potential to increase biodiversity. The key information is that there is potential around urban ponds that remains to be developed. The same ponds were also discussed by Olivier Ertz and Daniel Repo (COMEM HEIG-VD) when they presented the development phases of the participatory WebGIS platform developed to collect the location of private ponds from residents, not identified in the MARVILLE project. Participatory approaches used here were also among the methods presented by Florent Joerin (G2C Institute, HEIG-VD) and used in the BioMon project whose goal is to provide tools for monitoring biodiversity in the city of Lausanne.
The workshop ended with the presentation (S.Joost, LASIG, EPFL) of some perspectives related to the use of night high-resolution orthophotos and sound data as predictors in the context of the analysis and management of biodiversity in urban areas.