Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Restoration of Biodiversity in Urban Settings - the Leuphana Campus (Übung)

Dozent/in: María Trinidad Torres García

Termin:
wöchentlich | Freitag | 08:15 - 11:45 | 07.04.2025 - 11.07.2025 | C 13.107 Labor

Inhalt: Urban areas are a key showplace for socio-ecological restoration. The Leuphana campus holds a great potential for biodiversity restoration and connecting people to nature more. The work in this course is very much project-focused with work in groups on specific aspects of the sustainability challenge of restoring more biodiversity on campus. These challenges include balancing options for landscaping that include more native and biodiverse assemblages and cover different habitat types for plants and animals, as well as issues of openness and acceptance of different ways of landscaping and sharing space, and logistical and content issues such as lack of biodiversity knowledge and identification skills both in students and landscape gardeners. We will be navigating this complexity and the goal will be to interact with a number of different stakeholders involved in campus landscaping, among them the Leuphana Biodiversitäts AG, the Präsidium, gardeners and the other campus stakeholders. The course has four weekly teaching hours to allow for the integration of content and learning of key approaches and methods as well as more time for analysis and conclusions. The course includes components of ecological restoration science with the practice of ecological restoration. Over time I/we am/are setting up a series of reduced mowing and restored meadows across the campus (aside from the nice grasslands we already have in the Biotopgarten), where we compare both plant and pollinator diversity to control areas that are very regularly mown. We now have three restored meadows (where we prepare the soil and sowed seed mixtures) as well as two reduced mowing sites. Each semester we have three student groups: one assessing plant diversity (vegetation), one pollinator group and an outreach group, that work together to integrate the results and communicate them to the wider community. This recurring seminar allows for long-term effects of social ecological restoration and biodiversity restoration to be assessed over time, as the campus dynamically changes with the activities. This course allows students to gain hands-on experiences in both urban restoration and the complexity and communication skills needed for effective biodiversity change. The successful implementation of restoration measures significantly depends on public acceptance and communication. Therefore we will also practice the communication of scientific perspectives with the public by doing an informative campaign about the biodiversity values on the Leuphana campus.

• Leuphana Bachelor - Minor Raumwissenschaften (ab Studienbeginn WiSe 21/22) - Räumliche Planung in der Praxis
• Leuphana Bachelor - Minor Raumwissenschaften (Studienbeginn WiSe 19/20 und 20/21) - Biodiversity and Conservation