Interest in understanding urban biodiversity and how it is distributed is high and increasing. Understanding the variations and heterogeneities across the urban landscapes is fundamental to explaining urban biodiversity patterns found in cities. In this study, we developed an urban classification framework to facilitate biodiversity analyses. We then used citizen science data to test whether our typology can be used as an effective tool for understanding urban biodiversity patterns. Specifically, we used hierarchical clustering of 18 biophysical, demographic and built environment variables to classify 6,040 neighborhoods within Greater Los Angeles. We then analyzed over 60,000 photo-vouchered citizen science observations from iNaturalist.org to examine how different taxa and species utilize the different urban types. Ordination analyses were used to investigate how species composition is associated with different urban types.
Results/Conclusions
Nine distinct urban types were identified in our study, within which has its own unique biological and sociological meanings to wildlife. In general, there were more iNaturalist observations and species being observed in natural areas and urban open, but there were observations in at least 55% of the neighborhoods and observation of at least 500 species in even the most highly developed neighborhood types. We found that over 150 species are found within all nine urban types, but ordination analyses also revealed that certain species are strongly associated with certain types, which challenges aspects of the urban homogenization hypothesis. Our results also indicate the effects of different urban types on species composition vary by taxa. The unique contribution of this study is that it combines citizen science data and a suite of environmental factors to understand how different urban factors structure biodiversity in cities. What’s more, our study provides an example for other cities around the world that wish to pursue similar urban biodiversity assessments.