Using urban greenspace as an outdoor classroom
Funding body: Griffith University (grant submitted to Office for Community Partnerships)
Project leader: Guy Castley
Project members: Jason Byrne, Aysin Dedekorkut, Jean-Marc Hero, Alison Sammel, Maureen Newton, Catherine Pickering, Jon Harris
Project description: This research explores how urban greenspace may be used effectively as a pedagogical and community outreach tool. The project envisages developing an environmental education trail on Griffith University lands on the Gold Coast campus to protect rare and endangered habitats and to allow for students in planning, design, environmental assessment, environmental education and environmental science courses to access the site as an outdoor classroom for conducting intercept surveys with greenspace users, undertaking flora and fauna assessments, designing effective signage, developing management plans and strategies and developing effective outreach programs with traditional custodians and nearby residents.
Expected outputs: Environmental education trail, educational signage, management plans
Status: Stage 1 to be completed by December 2009
Assessing the potential of urban greenspace for climate change adaptation
Funding body: Griffith University New Researcher Grant
Project leader: Jason Byrne
Project members: Christina Qi Li, Ned Wales, Louise Robb, Jianjun Yang, Jean Hillier, Jennifer Wolch
Project description: Using a Gold Coast case study, this research explores the entent to which urban greenspace may offer a way to adapt built environments to the anticipated impacts of climate change. Greenspace offers numerous ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, stormwater attenuation, heat island mitigation, dust suppression, flood mitigation, and ultimately energy savings that may help us adapt to increased temperatures, higher intensity storm events and concommitant flooding that are expected with climate change. Using CITYgreen GIS software, the project will quantify the capacity of various types of urban greenspace on the Gold Coast to buffer built environments from climate change impacts. Intercept surveys will also be conducted with greenspace users to ascertain the extent of the ecosystem service benefits they derive from urban greenspace. This pilot study will also be replicated in Hangzhou, China.
Expected outputs: Report to funding body, conference paper, journal articles, and an ARC grant application.
Status: To be completed by December 2009