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1. Insect pollinator and natural enemy communities in green roof and ground-level urban habitats

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-023-01499-6  

   McNamara_Manning, Katherine; Coffman, Reid R; Bahlai, Christie A (June 2024, Urban Ecosystems)

   Urban greenspaces, including green roofs and ground-level urban habitats provide habitat for insect communities in cities. However, beneficial insect communities likely differ between human-managed habitats because of varying provision of resources and connectivity in these greenspaces. This study examined the insect communities in four extensive green roofs and three non-adjacent, similarly structured, managed ground-level habitats. We detected a high degree of overlap in insect taxa but found moderate differences in overall insect community composition between the green roof and ground-level habitats. While there was no difference in Shannon diversity between green roofs and ground-level habitats, the ground-level habitat had greater insect taxa richness. Green roof and ground-level habitats supported pollinators and natural enemies, while ground-level had greater mean pollinator and natural enemy richness and Shannon diversity. Green roofs intentionally designed for biodiversity using native plants for habitat did not differ from those designed for stormwater management and energy reduction using non-native plants in insect community metrics used in this study. These findings suggest that urban greenspaces continue to provide valuable habitat while connectivity and structure play a role in shaping urban insect communities. 

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2. Reducing Urban Heat Island Effects While Providing Affordable Housing in Bunker Hill

   https://doi.org/10.38126/JSPG180404  

   Atherton, Kathryn; Dambal, Vrinda; Miller, Tara; Smith, Ian; Wright, Jessica (September 2021, Journal of Science Policy & Governance)

   The Bunker Hill Public Housing development is a historic public housing building, home to a large population of racial and ethnic minorities, that requires major redevelopment and repair to enhance the safety of its residents. The Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) recently approved a $1.46 billion redevelopment for the property, a part of which is allocated to remove and replace ~250 mature trees around the public housing units. Removal of these trees would affect an already vulnerable population significantly more exposed to the effects of heat events, including heat-related stress, morbidity, and mortality, which will worsen with climate change in the coming years. While the BPDA proposal seeks to address the issue that the area already experiences 20% less cooling due to a lack of vegetation by replanting more trees, their estimated timescale of more than a decade for the canopy to just return to its current size is concerning. In order to mitigate the added heat stress caused by the tree removal, we propose the supplementary action of installing green roofs on buildings throughout the development. These green roofs would continue to provide cooling and beneficial community services even once the tree canopy has returned. These measures will serve as an appropriate stopgap measure until the canopy can return to size and expand as well as providing the community with the same co-benefits, such as air quality improvement, noise pollution reduction, community spaces, and locally grown food from community gardens, that more affluent parts of the city already experience. The installation of green roofs and supplemental vegetation will take only 0.25% of the entire redevelopment project budget and will have a large return in community wellness. 

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3. 3D Solar Harvesting and Energy Generation via Multilayers of Transparent Porphyrin and Iron Oxide Thin Films

   https://doi.org/10.3390/en16073173  

   Lin, Jou; Lyu, Mengyao; Shi, Donglu (April 2023, Energies)

   Photovoltaic solar cells have been extensively used for various applications and are considered one of the most efficient green energy sources. However, their 2D surface area solar harvesting has limitations, and there is an increasing need to explore the possibility of multiple layer solar harvest for enhanced energy density. To address this, we have developed spectral-selective transparent thin films based on porphyrin and iron oxide compounds that allow solar light to penetrate multiple layers, significantly increasing solar harvesting surface area and energy density. These thin films are designed as photovoltaic (PV) and photothermal (PT) panels that can convert photons into either electricity or thermal energy for various green energy applications, such as smart building skins and solar desalination. The advantages of this 3D solar harvesting system include enlarged solar light collecting surface area and increased energy density. The multilayer system transforms the current 2D to 3D solar harvesting, enabling efficient energy generation. This review discusses recent developments in the synthesis and characterization of PV and PT transparent thin films for solar harvesting and energy generation using multilayers. Major applications of the 3D solar harvesting system are reviewed, including thermal energy generation, multilayered DSSC PV system, and solar desalination. Some preliminary data on transparent multilayer DSSC PVs are presented. 

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4. Micro-Climate of Nature-Based Solutions in Stockholm Royal Seaport

   https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4711713  

   Branny, Artur; Andersson, Erik; McPhearson, Timon (January 2024, SSRN)

   Extreme weather events are on the rise, increasingly impacting cities and their urban populations. In response, urban greening and nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as key approaches for reducing risks from multiple types of extreme climate and weather events while making a positive impact on urban social and environmental inequities. NbS interventions are high on urban agendas worldwide, but in practice, they often are hyper-local and contain novel ecological entities, with unknown capacity to deal with different pressures and disturbances. Thus, there is an urgent need to build knowledge around how, when, and under what circumstances different NbS can be expected to perform their functions as intended. One step towards building, and then constantly updating, such knowledge is to establish practices for monitoring and evaluating NbS.In this study, we showcase a novel approach based on wireless sensor technology that harnesses hyperlocal data in real time to understand the direct impact of NbS on the local climate across seasonal variation and under extreme weather conditions. We aimed to quantify to what extent NbS are contributing to ecosystem services such as cooling.To answer this, we installed eighteen microsensor weather stations across the biggest and most recent sustainable urban development in Sweden - Stockholm Royal Seaport. We investigated five distinct types of NbS - forest parks, green courtyards, rain gardens, green roofs, and lawns, during the summer of 2021 to examine whether real-time temperature changes varied between NbS site types. Despite large differences in vegetation and urban landscape, we did not observe a clear trend in air temperature differences between sites, even for experimental reference sites. Our analysis reveals that forest parks are the coolest and the green roofs are the warmest green places overall. The largest differences in daytime temperatures reached up to 2°C difference between sites in summer, which gradually disappeared during cooler months. Our results suggest that regional weather dynamics dominate over the Stockholm Royal Seaport’s micro-climate, leading to a relative similarity in NbS cooling performances. Though the district overall may be too homogeneous to affect air temperature variation and local NbS too small to alter the regional weather patterns, we nonetheless conclude that ecosystem services of NbS should not be taken for granted. Results suggest that NbS interventions, almost regardless of type, need to be considered and implemented at larger district scales to add up to the substantial total green cover needed to impact local and regional temperatures. 

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5. Recent Range Expansion and Genomic Admixture in a Kleptoparasitic Spider, Argyrodes lanyuensis : A Case of Adaptive Introgression on Small, Isolated Islands of the Taiwan–Philippine Transition Zone?

   https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.17630  

   Responte, Mae A; Wu, Cheng‐Yu; Elias, Noraya U; Brown, Rafe M; Dai, Chia‐Yen; Su, Yong‐Chao (February 2025, Molecular Ecology)

   ABSTRACT Adaptive introgression involves the acquisition of advantageous genetic variants through hybridisation, which are subsequently favoured by natural selection due to their association with beneficial traits. Here, we analysed speciation patterns of the kleptoparasitic spider,Argyrodes lanyuensis, through genomic analyses and tested for possible genetic evidence of adaptive introgression at the Taiwan–Philippines transition zone. Our study used highly polymorphic SNPs to demonstrate that speciation occurred when the Hualien (on Taiwan Island + Green Island) and Orchid Island + Philippine lineages separated during the early to mid‐Pleistocene. The best colonisation model suggested by approximate Bayesian computation and random forests and biogeographical analyses supported an inference of a bottleneck during speciation, an interpretation reinforced by observation of lowerF_STvalues and reduced genetic diversity of the Orchid Island + Philippines lineage. We also found the highest support for the occurrence of introgression on the youngest island (Green Island) of the Taiwan–Philippines transition zone based on the ABBA‐BABA test. Our study highlights the inference of two noteworthy species (Hualien + Green Island and Orchid Island + Philippines) based on our species delimitation tests, with gene flow between Green Island and Orchid Island that indicates introgression. The potential adaptive alleles in Green Island population, which are under balancing selection, provide initial evidence of possible rare case of adaptive introgression. This could represent an evolutionary response to a newly formed niche (or novel geographical context) lying between the tropical climate of the Philippines and the subtropical climate of Hualien, Taiwan. 

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