CUGE's Professional Speaker’s Series recently featured a talk by Associate Professor Mark McDonnell, the founding Director of the Australian Research Centre of Urban Ecology (ARCUE) and Associate Professor from The University of Melbourne.  Titled “The emerging discipline of urban ecology: challenges and opportunities”, the talk was attended by professionals from the fields of academia, landscape architecture, conservation and park management.

The talk provided a platform for both speaker and participants to share knowledge and exchange views on urban ecology.  AP Mark shared on the emergence of the study of urban ecology, and discussed research findings and case studies on urban ecology of cities in United States, Europe and Hong Kong. The participants also shared their views and concerns on the maintenance of biodiversity in Singapore.  

Landscape ecology, architecture, planning and environmental science are some of the key elements that made up the integrated study of urban ecology, which is multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional.  Urban ecology has become an important emerging discipline especially in the context of Singapore.  CUGE Research has been actively engaging ARCUE on collaboration on knowledge transfer and research in the area of urban ecology.