Abstract
The purpose of the journey is to participate with an oral presentation in the international conference "Conservation in an Urbanising World", arranged by the Society for Conservation Biology in New York 30/7-2/8 2004. For the first time in history, more than half of the world´s population lives in urban areas. The urbanization process poses significant conservation challenges, and therefore, the conference for the first time has an urbanisation theme. Since effects of urbanisation on species and communities have been studied in the project "Fauna in urbanising areas - wetlands and small waters" (FORMAS dnr 21.5/2001-2674), the conference is a good opportunity to present the results. The aim of the project was to develop knowledge, useful for integration of biodiversity objectives in planning and environmental assessment in urbanising areas. The two species groups, waterbirds and dragonflies, were investigated in 64 ponds and small lakes in an urban-rural gradient in and around Stockholm. As explanatory variables for species richness, we used habitat variables from field surveys, GIS-derived landscape variables and spatially explicit, quantified urban disturbances like density of human population, recreation pressure, road density and traffic intensity. The results showed that high species richness of waterfowl was not correlated with that of dragonflies, but predictive models for both species groups were improved by incorporating landscape and urban disturbance variables.
Sweden