How can wastelands promote biodiversity in cities ? A review.

Urbanisation leads to natural habitats being fragmented with various effects according to the species and their ecological characteristics. Paradoxically, the urbanisation process creates relatively unused environments, wastelands, habitats which could contribute to biodiversity conservation in urban regions. In this review we examined the role of wastelands in maintaining biodiversity in the city and assessed the different factors responsible for wasteland biodiversity. 37 articles were suitable for our aim. Most of the studies have been conducted in large cities in Western and Central Europe. A wasteland is defined as an abandoned site with spontaneous vegetation (i.e. wild grown vegetation). In most cases, wastelands harbour more species than other urban green spaces. The processes which affect the biodiversity of wastelands operate on two different levels. Locally, the area size, age, soil, microclimate and the vegetation structure are the dominant factors. As in other environments, the species richness increases with the size of the wasteland. Wastelands of different ages include different stages of vegetation, ranging from pioneer to pre-forest stages, and consequently harbour different communities of plants and animals. The diversity of anthropogenic soil substrates leads to different plant communities. At the landscape scale, matrix composition and geographic connectivity between wastelands influence the biodiversity of wastelands, although to a lesser extent than the local features. We show that wastelands have a real potential to contribute to biodiversity conservation in urban regions. At the city scale, they represent habitats which urban planners need to take into account and include in dynamic urban planning.