Thesis
The ecological context and personal valuation of backyard food gardens in Portland, Oregon
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2014
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102830
Abstract
We identify and measure environmental predictors of ant and beetle diversity in urban backyards in the Portland, OR metropolitan area and investigate gardener perceptions of food security and biodiversity. Yard scale predictors of urban biodiversity can easily be manipulated to enhance urban biodiversity and contribute to large scale conservation plans if coordinated. Additionally, if gardens can maintain or enhance urban biodiversity and food security then they could be invaluable to conservation and hunger reduction efforts. The ants and beetles of 20 yards with gardens and 17 yards without gardens were sampled with pitfall traps and environmental characteristics of each yard, such as ground cover, area, tree count and canopy cover, were measured. The perceptions of biodiversity and food security of 20 urban gardeners were surveyed. Five of the gardeners were also interviewed to create gardener bios and investigate perceptions and motivations in greater depth. Diversity measures, species richness, abundance and Shannon Diversity, were calculated and used as the response variables in generalized linear models. The environmental characteristics that described the deviance of each response variables were determined with the stepAIC function in R. The most common and important predictors of the diversity measures included the garden type (or lack of), region, impervious surface v area and leaf litter and fallen branch cover. This suggests in-ground gardening can at least maintain urban ant and beetle diversity while other methods, such as gardening in raised beds, appear to greatly reduce ant and beetle diversity. They also suggest that regional predictors may play a more important role in determining ant and beetle diversity in the Portland metropolitan area than found in similar studies in other cities.
Metrics
7 File views/ downloads
18 Record Views
Details
- Title
- The ecological context and personal valuation of backyard food gardens in Portland, Oregon
- Creators
- James Roy Moore
- Contributors
- John G. Bishop (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Environment, School of the (CAHNRS)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525387301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis