Where the wild things are: how nature might respond as coronavirus keeps humans indoors
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Intriguing things sometimes happen in places deserted by people. Plants creep back, animals return and, slowly, birdsong fills the air. The coronavirus pandemic means public spaces the world over have been temporarily abandoned. Major roads are all but empty […]
Nurturing Nature, designing a home with biodiversity in mind: Sanctuary Magazine
Here at ICON Science we are passionate about conservation of biodiversity, both outside of cities and within. Georgia Garrard et al (2018) published their thoughtful paper Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design which aims to question how we plan, design and build cities so that they make a positive, on-site contribution to biodiversity and encourage everyday access […]
Help save wildlife in your own backyards
‘Eco-anxiety’ is a term that describes the sense of despair for the state of the planet that has settled on many of us since the Australian summer of bushfires. Aside from broader concerns about climate change, many of us have a feeling of helplessness knowing that over 1 billion animals perished in the fires and […]
Trees are hot news this year
First it was the hopeful-but-questionable ‘One Trillion Trees’ initiative, announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with supporters as diverse as Jane Goodall and Donald Trump. At the same time, large areas of Australia were on fire – in total, estimates are that we lost 20% of our forest cover in the climate-change-driven ‘Black […]
Biodiversity Research and Monitoring Forum in The City of Melbourne
Members of the ICS research group recently attended The Biodiversity Research and Monitoring Forum held by The City of Melbourne – a day of discussions about biodiversity research in the urban area of Melbourne. It was a fantastic day to meet practitioners, decision makers and researchers working in Melbourne. Three members of ICS spoke about […]
Wildlife gardening for conservation in cities
by Laura Mumaw In this article we explore how the Knox Gardens for Wildlife program, a collaboration between a municipality (Knox City Council) and community group (Knox Environment Society) in greater Melbourne involves residents in gardening to help conserve indigenous biodiversity. We used semi-structured interviews and Council survey data to identify key program features that […]
PhD opportunity – Designing green spaces for biodiversity and human well-being
Interested in joining our research group and working on an exciting interdisciplinary project as part of your PhD? Here is a great opportunity!
New ARC-Linkage Project: Designing green spaces for biodiversity and human well-being
The health and well-being of urban residents is intrinsically linked to green spaces and their biodiversity. Yet little is known about the mechanisms through which green space design delivers biodiversity and human well-being benefits. Through our recently funded Australian Research Council – Linkage Project ‘Designing green spaces for biodiversity and human well-being’ (LP160100324) we aim to […]
The Little Things that Run the City
How many insect species live in your city? How are they distributed amongst the city’s green spaces? What are the ecological processes they perform and ecosystem services they deliver? What are their most frequent ecological interactions? The Little Things that Run the City is a project that aims to address these and other questions within […]
