The Trade-off Between Housing Density and Sprawl Area: Minimizing Impacts to Carabid Beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

• Main Authors: Sara A. Gagné, Lenore Fahrig
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Resilience Alliance 2010-12-01
• Series: Ecology and Society
• Subjects: development scenario; forest fragmentation; forest taxa; ground beetle; housing density; residential development; urban sprawl
• Online Access: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art12/

Increasing housing density has negative effects on native biodiversity. This implies that we should build at low density to conserve native species. However, for a given human population, low-density development must cover a large area, resulting in sprawl. A pertinent question is then, at what housing density are the impacts of a given human population on native biodiversity minimized? We addressed this question with carabid beetles in Ottawa and Gatineau, Canada. First, we collected beetles at 22 sites representing a range of housing densities. We then used these data to estimate beetle abundance and species richness in hypothetical development scenarios representing the housing density/sprawl area trade-off. Our results suggest that clustering development at a high housing density minimizes the impacts of a given human population on carabid beetles. If these results are general across all forest taxa, then planning that favors densification rather than sprawl would minimize urbanization effects on forest biodiversity.