Daniel Haberman

McGill University
M.Sc. candidate

Supervisor: Elena Bennett
Start: 2014-09-02
End: 2016-09-01

Project

Managing Ecosystem Service Bundles in Urban Areas and the Surrounding Landscapes.
By 2050, more than half of the world's population will live in urban areas. My research interests involve finding ways to manage urban landscapes sustainably, in order to accommodate this influx of people while maintaining the ability of the surrounding landscapes to provide ecosystem services. My M.Sc. thesis will focus on the spatial layout of ecosystem service capacities and demands in urban areas and the surrounding landscapes. Often times, city dwellers benefit from ecosystem services derived in rural or peri-urban areas. I hope to map and model these disparities in order to provide support for better management decisions within a case study of Montreal. I hope to answer the following questions: How do ecosystem services bundle in urban areas and surrounding environments? What roles do the dynamics of landscape composition/configuration play in the provision of these ecosystem services? And how can resources be managed in urban hubs to maximize human well-being and happiness while minimizing the loss of crucial regulating services.

Keywords

ecosystem services, urban biodiversity, natural resources, geographic information systems, landscape configuration, landscape composition