Romain Jaeger

PhD student

Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) – Institut des Sciences de la Forêt Tempérée (ISFORT)

Sylvain Delagrange (UQO), Marc Cadotte (UofT)

jaer01@uqo.ca mail_outline

Interests and Expertise

Short description of Project

Ecological connectivity (structural and functional) of urban green infrastructures (UGI) and their relative importance in urban ecosystem services (UES) provision as well as ecosystem disservices provision. During my PhD, I will first establish a global portrait of the ecological connectivity of the urban green infrastructures of large cities such as Gatineau and Sherbrooke at different spatial scales (e.g. neighborhood, district, city). For the 3 spatial scales, the evaluation of ecological connectivity will be linked to the provision of a set of urban ecosystem services (mitigation of UHI, regulation of rainwater, reduction of atmospheric pollution). Secondly, I will simulate (at the same three spatial scales) the evolution of urban ecosystem services/disservices according to different contrasting greening strategies (i.e. greening of schoolyards, parking lots, wastelands, riparian strips). Finally, in a third step, we will document the characteristics of the vegetation (specific richness, functional diversity, vertical structure) that can help to design more efficient and more sustainable green infrastructures, but also more dense with the aim to provide higher levels of per unit area based on functional complementarity and facilitation hypothesis.

Short description of internship with partner

• Ville de Gatineau : Find tools to better plan urban greening strategies and to better manage urban green infrastructures while enhancing ecological connectivity.
• CREDDO : Asses the benefits of greening school yards projects.
• Horti-Cité : Develop more productive and more resilient urban green infrastructure in order to produce more urban ecosystem services of interest.