by Martin Andersen, Artine Ismaili, David Leu, Sonja Rigoni and Jessica Vargas
Urban parks play a vital role in sustaining biodiversity within cities by offering habitats for various species. Among the key factors shaping urban ecosystems, tree diversity may strongly influence bird communities by providing diverse food sources, nesting sites, and microhabitats.Studies repeatedly show that the more diverse the vegetation, the more animal species feel at home there. This correlation is particularly evident in birds. Parks with a variety of tree species and a diverse natural structure tend to be home to more bird species. The type of planting and how the green spaces are designed also play an important role, for example, whether there are many transitions between open and vegetated areas.
We wanted to find out if there is a link between the kind of trees in a park and the local bird diversity in that same park. So we went out and counted birds in three parks in Zurich, Josefwiese, Bullingerhof and Bäckeranlage during one hour in November following an established bird-counting protocol. Indeed, we made some interesting observations, which you can check out in detail in our blogpost linked below.
With our blogpost we want to spark your interest in biodiversity in and around the city of Zurich and we welcome you to go out yourself and observe the living nature in your neighbourhood, participate in citizen science projects or even take action to create more habitats for more different species.
We hope that our post that we produced in the context of the Geography. Matters module at the Department of Geography in the fall semester of 2025 will capture your interest in joining actions to promote biodiversity in your neighbourhood!
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e4c4bdaa4cf54cd082d03480f5604450
About GEO410
This blog post is part of the outcome of an interdisciplinary Master’s-level course in Geography: GEO410 Geography. Matters. The course aims to bring together diverse geographic research perspectives to engage with some of the most pressing societal and environmental challenges of our time. As the only compulsory module of the Geography MSc program, the course encourages students to think across sub-disciplines of geography and to explore how geographic research can meaningfully contribute to debates around sustainability, justice, and environmental change.
Beyond conducting interdisciplinary research as a team, a central aim of the course was to experiment with creative and accessible forms of science communication. Rather than producing a purely academic output, students translated their research insights into blogposts, intended for a wider, non-specialist audience. The contributions thus showcase not only rigorous scientific work by highly motivated students, but also the importance of communicating research beyond the university and engaging broader publics in conversations about geography, sustainability and the future of our shared environments.
The students in the course GEO410 were supervised by Andreas Vieli, Christian Berndt and Sofia van Moorsel as lecturers and by Nikolas Klaudy as teaching assistant.
Quelle Beitragsbild: https://pixabay.com/de/photos/t%c3%bcrkentaube-kragentaube-vogel-taube-8066845/