Evaluating beneficial insects and their services within changing urban landscapes.

Project Investigators: Scott Prajzner and Mary Gardiner

     Due to foreclosure of homes and vacancy of commercial properties there are more than 3,300 acres of vacant land within the city of Cleveland, OH (Cleveland Land Lab). City and county land banks have acquired much of this property and aim to help local citizen groups revitalize Cleveland neighborhoods through the repurposing of these lands. Goals include utilizing vacant land to mitigate storm water runoff, expand public parks, restore natural habitat, provide affordable housing and produce food. Determining how to use particular plots of land is difficult given that the ecology of vacant lot sites and their role in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services within an urban landscape matrix is not well understood.

     The ALE lab's goal is to evaluate the suitability of vacant lands for sustainable food production. We aim to accomplish this by measuring the diversity, abundance and activity of beneficial arthropods present within vacant urban lands to evaluate how converting this land into urban agricultural production affects these organisms and the biocontrol and pollination services they supply. Our hypotheses are that 1) the conversion of vacant land to agricultural production will reduce the diversity and abundance of the beneficial arthropod community found, and 2) production sites will be influenced by the composition of the surrounding urban landscape.