Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, had been rapidly urbanized since 1960s, and environmental destruction such as habitat fragmentation occurred while urbanization. Recently, however, demand for green spaces has increased, and citizens' interest in the environment and ecosystem has been growing rapidly. Citizen science is efficient to promote citizens' ecological sensitivity and to raise awareness of biodiversity, and provides vast amounts of data at the same time. The purpose of this study is to analyze spatial distribution based on pollinators data recorded from citizen science program and to suggest management strategies for urban green spaces by analyzing preferred habitat traits of pollinators with the habitat-suitability model. From 2016 to 2017, 71 people participated and recorded 844 data. Those data were classified into 5 groups, such as European honeybees (Apis mellifera), bumblebees (Bombus spp.), Other Hymenoptera, Diptera and Lepidoptera. The environmental variables were derived from the urban ecological status map provided by Seoul government, and the habitat-suitability map was generated with using MaxEnt. The habitat-suitability of each pollinator group according to the biotope type were analyzed statistically.
Results/Conclusions
The variable with the highest contribution in all pollinator groups was biotope type. Grade of biotope was followed contributor in Lepidoptera and other Hymenoptera group, and impermeability was the second in Diptera. ‘Distance from water’ was the second contributor in the european honeybees and bumblebees groups. European honeybees preferred near the water system, while bumblebees tended to favor distant places. In all groups except bumblebees, the most preferred biotope types in all groups were landscaping areas and forest preference was very low. The most favored grade of biotope was politically non-protection area. However, bumblebees showed relatively high forest preference and preferred high grade biotope. Among the major pollinators, bumblebees are considered to be threatened during urbanization. Therefore, it is necessary to create more natural green areas for conservation. This study suggests that small green spaces within the city serve as important habitats for pollinators. However, the observed data are biased toward the urban areas, suggesting that the contribution of forests is very undervalued. If intensive research is conducted by strengthening the protocol in the future, it is expected that the result will be much improved.