Royal Park Food web design
Royal Park Food Web: Designed Experiments
+ Partners: Biosciences Team: Ary Hoffman, Michael Kearney; UEDLAB Team
The UEDLAB is working in a cross-disciplinary team to utilise a designed experiments framework to establish and enhance urban food webs and conservation at Melbourne's Royal Park. Project objectives aim to compliment and contribute to the City of Melbourne's Royal Park Master Plan. The role of Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung seasonality - indicating life cycle, food web and the climate of Royal Park in relation to the Matchstick Grasshopper - plays a central role for informing project designs.
The Royal Park master planning process has a unique opportunity to become a pioneer for innovation around ecology and design. The implementation of designed experiments frameworks will support the ecological resilience of Royal park by focusing on food web connectivity, habitat restoration and functional landscape features. The framework will help create opportunities for educational community interactions that demonstrate urban ecosystem functions, ecological management and sustainable urban development in action.
In addition to communicating the species’ activities to the public through design, we aim to develop and integrate designed experiments as proposed landscape architecture interventions and components of the Royal Park masterplan:
- Develop interpretation of Royal Park design aesthetic
- Develop cross sections building on existing conditions that communicate planting densities, species diversity, soil horizons and overall maintenance
- Establish planting templates for food web planting with planting interventions and maintenance strategies as designed experiments
- Establish and develop approach for researchers involvement and community engagement with coordination strategies
- Establish citizen scientist group for maintenance, management, monitoring and assessment processes
- Highlight value of integrating food web research and design strategies into management plan
Overview of the proposed design experiments
Food webs are complex and highly interconnected systems that play an important role in natural regeneration and ecological resilience. Food web habitat plots are designed for multiple species and include genetic sampling for various habitats and food sources to evaluate feeding patterns. The Matchstick Grasshopper habitat islands, described in the adjacent column, encourage urban food web conservation that will support species such as the Superb Fairy Wren and White’s skink in Royal Park. The designed experiments are developed to enhance the existing food web biodiversity in the park through an ecological approach to design.
Planting strategy for urban ecological resilience
The above illustrations are indicative designed experiments formed by low, medium and high density habitat islands. The approach encourages species translocation and therefore resilience trough ecological adaptations. The planting strategy will support and build on the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) nursery site management recommendations and will include low, medium and high-density habitat islands for the Matchstick Grasshopper. Habitat islands are to facilitate species translocation and monitoring practices will establish migration patterns, resistance in the landscape, species and genetic spread, rate of spread, behaviourally where the species goes and how this is impacted across the landscape.
