NSF Award
2431384
U.S. cities remain slow to respond to the impact of climate change due to limited staff capacity, difficulties with community buy-in, and gaps in knowledge. One of the most critical biodiversity losses related to climate change has been the decline of insect pollinators, due in large part to their lack of healthy habitats. Pollinators play an important role in providing natural benefits to cities' urban food systems. The loss of pollinators may limit cities’ ability to implement natural climate solutions as that loss could hamper the success of green infrastructure initiatives that rely on plants. Increasingly, scientists and the public are realizing the benefits of pollinators in their communities. This project team will co-create data, tools, and engagement actions on climate-resilient pollinator habitats with communities across the city of Denver, CO. Working with frontline communities most affected by climate change and nature loss is a central aim of this project. <br/><br/>The vision of the project is to facilitate community partners’ ability to identify, analyze, and prioritize existing spatial gaps in climate resilient landscape across the whole urban matrix of Denver and improve Denver’s climate resiliency by developing data to fill information gaps and research tools to aid decision making around community-driven project implementation. The project team will combine a genetic marking technique for insects with conventional GIS spatial data to provide a spatially explicit prioritization of significant gaps in the Denver urban matrix where landscape changes would benefit biodiversity, pollinators, residents, and overall climate resiliency. The team will directly measure pollinator and community response to experimental climate-resilient habitat installations that use optimized plant mixes developed by a plant selection tool from a prior pilot study. Working with partners, the research team will identify plots where habitats can be transformed with the plant mixes and measure both pollinator attractiveness and how the relevant community responds to the transformations. Creating research products that empower local community members and organizations is a central aim of this research project. <br/><br/>This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program’s Track A. Climate and Environmental Instability - Building Resilient Communities through Co-Design, Adaption, and Mitigation and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
