Grant: Alliance Grants

Over 80% of Canadians now live in cities with limited access to green space and the ecosystem services it provides. Urban green space promotes human health and improves social cohesion. It is particularly valuable as a nature-based solution to climate change, able to counteract the urban heat island effect and help store carbon. Unfortunately, we do not make the most of what urban green space we have, leaving tens of thousands of acres as low-value and costly-to-maintain turfgrass, which does little to address the biodiversity or climate change crises. Our partnership seeks to inform turfgrass-to-meadow conversion for The Meadoway project, a 16 km hydro-corridor ecological enhancement project that will connect the Rouge National Urban Park to downtown Toronto. This flagship restoration project has the potential to replace invasive plants with native species, increase habitat quality for pollinators, mitigate heat stress, and enhance carbon storage and sequestration, tackling the biodiversity and climate change crises simultaneously. Our proposed research will capitalize on the $4 million already invested in The Meadoway to address key knowledge gaps that will help extend turfgrass-to-meadow restoration to other underutilized urban green space across Canada. We will optimize seeding and site preparation methods to support the creation of biodiverse meadow habitat. We will quantify the benefits of this ecological restoration for butterflies and their plant hosts as well as the net benefits of meadow restoration for local temperature and the carbon budget. In achieving these objectives, we will provide state-of-the-art technical and professional training for two undergraduate thesis students, one MSc student, three PhD and one post-doc. These seven HQP will work closely with our partners to develop their research skills, as well as the collaboration and communication skills needed to tackle the climate change and biodiversity crises.