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Roadside and riverside green – urban corridors in the city of Vantaa, Finland

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Abstract

The spatial distribution of biodiversity has specific patterns in urban environments. The aim of this study was to compare the ecological profiles of plants in man-made traffic corridors and natural river corridors in the city of Vantaa. The number of corridor species represented 76.3 % of Vantaa’s total flora, even though corridors covered only 2.7 % of the city area. Corridor plants are mostly generalist species with wide ecological niches, and have ruderal and competitor life-strategies, while plants without occurrences in corridors are habitat specialists and species with narrow ecological niches. The conservation value of non-corridor habitats arises from the rarity of species, and the representation of the original boreal nature, while corridors contribute to the total diversity of species. The potential of corridors in urban conservation has not been fully appreciated.

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Acknowledgments

The Finnish Biodiversity Programme (grant no. 39715) supported the fieldwork for this study. Thanks are due to Prof. Jari Niemelä for critical comments on the manuscript and the Water protection Association of the River Vantaa and Helsinki for statistical information. We are grateful to Mr. Pekka Rahkonen for help with the illustrations (Figs. 1 and 3) and Prof. Mary Cannon and Dr. Stephen Venn for improving the language.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 65, Viikinkaari 2A, Helsinki, 00014, Finland

    P. Ranta, J. Kesulahti & T. Virtanen

  2. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    A. Tanskanen

  3. School of Management, University of Tampere, 33014, Tampere, Finland

    V. Viljanen

Authors
  1. P. Ranta
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  2. J. Kesulahti
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  3. A. Tanskanen
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  4. V. Viljanen
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  5. T. Virtanen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. Ranta.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Habitat codes and their numbers of species in Vantaa
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Ranta, P., Kesulahti, J., Tanskanen, A. et al. Roadside and riverside green – urban corridors in the city of Vantaa, Finland. Urban Ecosyst 18, 341–354 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-014-0402-z

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