2026 Publications
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Zhang X, Jin X, Fuller RA & Zhou Y (2026) Reconciling ecological protection and food production with enhanced systematic conservation planning: A case study in a rapidly urbanizing region of China. Habitat International, 174, 103888.
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Effective ecological conservation in rapidly urbanizing regions is a pressing challenge for sustainable development, especially in developing countries where food security is a core policy concern. This study addresses a key gap in current systematic conservation planning (SCP) applications, which often do not explicitly integrate trade-offs among urbanization, ecological protection, and food production. We take Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province—a typical high-conflict urbanized area in China—as a case study. We constructed 32 scenarios by varying cost structures, the use of the SCP framework, and the integration of development planning constraints. Through quantitative evaluation of conservation efficiency and effectiveness across scenarios, we propose optimal pathways for conservation in highly urbanized areas. The results show that it is possible to more than double the protected area coverage without increasing the cost of food output per unit of protected area. Simultaneously, the proportions of various conservation features represented in protected areas can be significantly increased, e.g., with shrubland representation increasing from 0% to more than 30% in some scenarios, thereby enhancing the connectivity and integrity of protected area landscapes. With careful planning, SCP-derived solutions minimize land-use conflicts and remain robust under future cost uncertainty. While incorporating food production costs into SCP is essential, considering the opportunity cost associated with potential improvements in food production is less necessary. This research provides a practical and transferable framework for optimizing conservation planning under complex trade-offs, offering practical guidance for efficient land-use governance in China and other rapidly urbanizing regions.
Submitted to Landscape and Urban Planning on 31 Jan 2024; desk rejection 12 Feb 2024; submitted to Biological Conservation 16 Feb 2024; rejected after review; submitted to Habitat International 1 Jun 2025; revision dates unknown; resubmitted on 10 Feb 2026; accepted 25 May 2026.
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Thomas FM, Greenacre L, Garrard GE, Fuller RA, Dyer AG, Gordon A, Ives CD, Harrison L, Van der Ree R, Jellinek S, Humphrey JE & Bekessy SA (2026) Context matters: Emotional responses to urban greening interventions depend on city setting. Urban Ecosystems, 29, 175.
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Urban green spaces deliver a remarkable range of human health and well-being benefits, and there is substantial, global effort into incorporating urban greening into the design of cities. However, intense competition for space in cities means small interstitial gaps in the urban fabric are being used for many contemporary green spaces, such as planter boxes or raised garden beds. These small urban greening interventions have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic when access to nature in cities became a key public concern. It is not yet known whether planter boxes in urbanised settings can provide well-being benefits as traditional parks and reserves have been found to. Here we show, using manipulated images, that as much as a 60% difference in a participant’s (n = 1200) emotional response to a planter box green space is due to changes in city context. This indicates that small green spaces in cities may provide quite different well-being benefits depending on their specific urban setting. As planting context is more important than the focal details of small green space interventions for creating emotional responses in urban residents, city planning could strategically consider not just whether, but where to integrate nature into urban areas to maximise well-being outcomes for residents.
Submitted to Nature Human Behaviour on 30 Jun 2020; rejected; submitted to Urban Sustainability on 28 Jan 2022; desk rejected; delayed for a while; submitted to Urban Forestry & Urban Greening on 22 Jan 2024; desk reject; submitted to Sustainable Cities and Society on 20 Feb 2024; revised and submitted to Urban Ecosystems on 12 Mar 2026; minor revision requested 21 Apr 2026; resubmitted 2 Jun 2026; accepted 8 Jun 2026.
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Shi X, Holden W, Simmonds JS, Clarke RH, Chapman JW, Liu Y, Fuller RA & Kerswell A (2026) Mistimed surveys lead to underestimated migratory bird impacts from wind farms. Journal of Applied Ecology, 63, e70386.
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Accurately estimating the likelihood of occurrence of threatened species is essential for effective impact assessments at development sites. Current survey guidelines often rely on coarse, static species distribution maps, risking misalignment for migratory birds present only seasonally.
We evaluated 70 wind farms in eastern Australia to assess the alignment between survey timing and seasonal occurrence of four migratory species. Using eBird-based relative abundance models, we classified recommended and actual survey periods as optimal, suboptimal or poorly timed.
Approximately half of all surveys were not optimal, and one fifth missed the species' potential temporal window of presence altogether. Field detections mostly occurred within modelled optimal or suboptimal windows, validating the effectiveness of our modelling approach for identifying suitable survey timing.
Likelihood of occurrence conclusions presented in the reviewed impact assessments were significantly lower at sites with suboptimal or poorly timed surveys compared to those with optimal timing, suggesting that poor survey timing can lead to systematic underestimation of species presence.
Synthesis and applications: Current guidance and approaches to surveying migratory birds at windfarm developments in Australia are insufficient. Evidence-based alignment with seasonal presence is needed to improve biodiversity assessment standards, ensuring renewable energy expansion proceeds in a way that better safeguards migratory species and supports global biodiversity and sustainability goals.
Submitted to Nature Sustainability on 1 Sep 2025; desk rejected; submitted to Gobal Change Bioloy on 31 Oct 2025; desk rejected on 5 Nov 2025; submitted to Journal of Applied Ecology on 7 Nov 2025; minor revisions requested 9 Jan 2026; resubmitted 7 Feb 2026; accepted 23 Mar 2026.
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Wu Y, Lei W, Zhang J, Zhao C, He J, Zhu Z, Liu Y, Liu J, Chen D, Ma Z, Amano T, Zhang M, Zhang Z & Fuller RA (2026) When experience breeds variability: age-dependent movement diversity in a successful shorebird. Movement Ecology, 14, 26.
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Migratory species are vulnerable to habitat loss, especially migratory birds that rely on multiple stopover sites during migration. According to conventional understanding, migratory birds typically show reduced behavioral variability as they age, with their migration routes becoming increasingly fixed through experience, which may make them even more vulnerable to habitat loss along their flyway. Indeed, in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), most waterbird populations have rapidly declined due to habitat loss and land use changes. However, some migratory species like the Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta have maintained or even increased their populations. We investigated whether this success might be linked to age-related patterns in migration behavior. Using satellite tracking technology, we monitored the movement behaviors of 48 adult and 20 juvenile Pied Avocets in eastern China from 2021 to 2024. Contrary to expectations, adults exhibited greater movement variability than juveniles. In the first two years of life, Pied Avocets performed relatively limited movements, adopting conservative migration strategies, which may reduce mortality risks. In contrast, experienced adults showed greater variability in their movement patterns. Some migrated to more southerly wintering grounds or more northerly breeding sites, and occasionally pioneered entirely new flight paths. Compared to juveniles, adult birds also showed larger home ranges during the pre-migration period and greater within-season movements during the non-migration period. This age-related increase in ranging behavior and movement variability may contribute to their population resilience in rapidly changing environments. Our findings suggest that the combination of risk-averse strategies in young birds and diverse movement strategies within adult populations, ranging from conservative to exploratory individuals, might represent an important adaptation mechanism for long-lived species facing environmental change.
Submitted to Ecography on 24 Oct 2024; desk reject; submitted to Journal of Animal Ecology on 19 Nov 2024; rejected after review 12 Mar 2025; submitted to Movement Ecology on 27 Sep 2025; revision requested on 9 Dec 2025; further revision requested on 3 Feb 2026; accepted 21 Feb 2026.
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Berdejo-Espinola V, Fuller RA & Zahnow R (2026) Physical and social disorder, and not tree cover, reduce perceived safety in urban green spaces. npj Urban Sustainability, 6, 48.
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Feeling unsafe is an important barrier to spending time in nature and, therefore, gaining the benefits that such experiences offer. Some research suggests that dense vegetation in green spaces can impede visibility, create hiding places for would-be offenders and reduce perceptions of safety among visitors. Drawing on household survey data from 356 residents of a metropolitan area in Paraguay, we measured perceptions of safety, social disorder, and physical disorder. We objectively measured urban green space biophysical characteristics using satellite-derived indicators such as tree cover, grass cover, and green space size. We found limited evidence that tree cover was associated with perceptions of safety, and while grass cover was positively associated with perceptions of safety in urban green spaces, this positive effect was moderated by green space maintenance. Physical disorder, including signs of poor maintenance, significantly reduced perceptions of safety. In our sample, perceived safety of green spaces did not significantly relate to frequency of visits to urban green spaces, suggesting safety must be considered alongside a suite of other factors when considering barriers and catalysts to spending time in nature. While acknowledging the limitations associated with using objective remote sensing metrics alongside subjective perceptual data, our results challenge the assumption that dense vegetation reduces the perceived safety in green spaces, and highlight the broad implications of physical disorder (including poor maintenance) and social disorder for impeding safety and potentially limiting the use of public nature spaces.
Submitted to npj Urban Sustainability on 8 Mar 2024; reject and resubmit decision on 28 Nov 2024; resubmitted 17 Jan 2025; further revision requested 22 Sep 2025; resubmitted 7 Oct 2025; accepted 7 Jan 2026; published 19 Mar 2026.
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Mu T, Verhoeven MA, Jackson MV, Piersma T, Fuller RA & Wilcove DS (2026) A "demand and supply" approach to monitoring habitat and population changes of migratory birds. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 24, e70035.
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Habitat loss and degradation threaten thousands of migratory bird species worldwide. Yet, because the distributions of migratory birds change throughout the year, quantifying the impacts of threats and identifying key sites for conservation attention have proved challenging. We suggest that the wider application of two key metrics could substantially improve current knowledge: (1) the intensity of birds’ habitat use at a site, representing the demand from the birds’ perspectives; and (2) the carrying capacity of the site, as measured by the supply of food or other resources for the birds. At local scales, the demand-to-supply ratio provides insights into priorities for conservation attention, even in the absence of comparable information from other sites. When scaled-up to multiple sites across entire flyways, this approach provides a much more comprehensive understanding of the constraints on bird populations than is currently available, thereby facilitating coordinated, efficient habitat protection at a flyway scale.
Submitted to Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment on 1 Nov 2024; revisions requested 28 Mar 2025; resubmitted 6 Jul 2025; further minor revision requested 2 Oct 2025; resubmitted 20 Oct 2025; accepted 5 Jan 2026.
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Wong-Topp S, Fuller RA, Dean AJ, Bekessy S & Zahnow R (2026) Urban nature equity must consider cultural nuances. npj Urban Sustainability, 6, 40.
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Culture profoundly influences the way a person engages with nature. As cities rapidly increase in cultural diversity, achieving universal equity in access to nature and the benefits that flow from it will depend on meaningful consideration of this diversity in urban design. Current approaches to urban planning and design tend to be implicitly monocultural, which may diminish equity of access and reproduce entrenched epistemological and material conditions that contribute to power imbalances and dictate whose preferences are reflected in urban nature spaces. To move toward culturally inclusive urban nature design demands explicit efforts be made in policy and practice to embrace the contextual, dynamic and multifaceted nature of culture and resist the implicit adoption of monocultural urban nature designs. We discuss the consequences of superficial cultural inclusion attempts and propose three key recommendations for taking a culturally-conscious approach towards urban nature equity.
Submitted to npj Urban Sustainability on 22 Dec 2024; minor revision requested on 17 Apr 2025; resubmitted 30 Apr 2025; further revision requested 2 Jun 2025; resubmitted 29 June 2025; further revision requested 29 Aug 2025, resubmitted 12 Sep 2025; further extremely tiny revisions requested 5 Dec 2025; resubmitted 8 Dec 2025; accepted 29 Jan 2026; published 12 Mar 2026.
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Wilson JP & Fuller RA (2026) Drone surveys of birds foraging in intertidal habitats: A proof-of-concept in Moreton Bay, Australia. Emu, 126, 65-75.
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Migratory shorebird populations are declining primarily because of intertidal habitat loss. Conservation efforts rely on monitoring, but ground surveys are generally impractical on extensive mudflats where shorebirds forage. On the 12th of March 2024, we used a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise to conduct a proof-of-concept drone survey of shorebirds foraging on a 650 m × 250 m section of intertidal mudflat within Moreton Bay, Australia (GPS: −27.51, 153.41). We surveyed seven 16 m wide transects, spaced 75 m apart, across the mudflat perpendicular to the tidal front. We generated image mosaics for each transect and used manual and computer vision methods to locate and identify the birds. We also conducted concurrent ground counts and monitored for disturbance. Drone surveys detected 77 waterbirds, while ground counts recorded 46 birds, including 31 waterbirds, 2 seabirds, 12 non-migratory shorebirds, and 1 migratory shorebird. Differences in counts were attributed to excessive spacing between transects. We recommend that surveys: (1) use sensors capable of 0.5 cm pix−1 resolution and a large image footprint from above the flight initiation distance of sensitive species; (2) use multiple batteries and drones if needed; (3) use a transect-based flight path oriented perpendicular to the tidal front with transects spaced using conservative abundance estimates; (4) acquire approval to fly beyond visual line of sight and above 120 m if necessary; (5) ensure compatibility between flight application, camera, and flight plan; (6) consider processing images individually rather than as orthomosaics; (7) use computer vision tools for large sites or aggregations.
Submitted to Emu on 21 Sep 2024; revision requested 24 Feb 2025; resubmitted 29 Jun 2025; further revision requested 21 Oct 2025, submitted 28 Nov 2025, accepted 1 Dec 2025.