Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Pollination service delivery is complex: Urban garden crop yields are best explained by local canopy cover and garden scale plant species richness
    (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2022-05) ; ;
    Latty, Tanya
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    1. Pollination is an important ecosystem service to agriculture, however, the factors influencing pollination in urban food gardens are poorly understood.
    2. We investigated how features within urban environments, including floral resources and canopy cover, impacted (a) flower visitation and seed production of a model plant (Brassica rapa) and (b) total yields of produce from urban gardens in Sydney, Australia.
    3. Floral visitation to model plants was dominated by a few common species, with honeybees responsible for 53.4% of visitation and native stingless bees and two hoverfly species accounting for another 37.1% of visitors; 28 other species were collectively responsible for less than 10% of visitation.
    4. While insect pollinators were abundant, the relationship between floral visitation and model plant reproductive output was weak and not always positive. The pollination success of model plants was only marginally impacted by environmental features, while pollinator visitation had a small negative impact. However, total crop yields across urban gardens were strongly influenced by local canopy cover and garden scale plant species richness.
    5. Synthesis and applications. The factors influencing pollination service delivery to urban gardens are complex; pollinator visitation, richness and/or floral resource availability may not always reflect positive, plant reproductive outcomes. Yields of garden crops, whether pollinator dependent or not, were more strongly influenced by surrounding environmental variables, including broad scale measures of canopy cover and local plant diversity, than pollination-related metrics. This implies policies to support pollinator richness will likely differ to those supporting crop yields in urban gardens and will require assessment and management of external environmental factors.
  • Publication
    Urban agriculture could provide 15% of food supply to Sydney, Australia, under expanded land use scenarios
    Urban agriculture (UA) can be highly productive in terms of yield per unit area, however productivity is limited by available land and high input requirements. We determined how much of the food supply of Sydney, Australia, could be produced through UA by synthesising yield data from 13 UA gardens with information on labour and key material inputs and using spatial analyses to assess available land area. We modelled three scenarios with varying proportions of available land used for food production; 25%, 50% or 75% of domestic yard space along with street verges and unused land (e.g. vacant lots). Around 15% of Sydney’s total food supply, or its entire vegetable supply, could be produced through UA under the low range scenario, increasing to 34% under the highest land use scenario. Under the low range scenario, all necessary irrigation water and organic soil amendments could be obtained from local waste streams, though these sources were insufficient to meet the needs of higher range scenarios. Available labour was a limiting factor in all scenarios, with the entire population being insufficient to meet labour needs required to maintain food production under efficiency and labour investment regimes typical of amateur urban gardeners. Establishing a professionalised UA workforce with greater labour efficiency would be required for managing the available land, however this scenario would likely require changes in public attitudes towards use of private land. These social issues, rather than physical limitations, may be the biggest factors preventing cities like Sydney from obtaining a non-trivial proportion of their food supply from UA.