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Record W7139618922

The susceptibility of urban greening to plant invasions

2025· dissertation· W7139618922 on OpenAlexfundaboutno aff
Garland Xie

Bibliographic record

VenueTSpace (University of Toronto) · 2025
Typedissertation
Language
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicUrban Green Space and Health
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaMitacsGovernment of Ontario
KeywordsSpecies richnessSoil seed bankIntroduced speciesBiomass (ecology)Native plantInvasive speciesPlant communitySowing
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Some urban green spaces (UGSs) are more likely to be invaded (‘invasibility’) than others. This context-dependency is because green space design differs widely in their economic input, management intensity, and plant species diversity. Higher invasibility increases the chance of successful invasions, prompting calls for control efforts in UGS. Yet, it is not clear what factors promote higher invasibility in UGS design. Here, I examine how an iterative process of rototilling, cover crops and sowing of native seed mixes prevents incipient biological invasions within Toronto (Canada). In Chapter 2, I conducted an observational study where I sampled soil seed banks from two restoration stages – newly-established once the restoration process has been completed, and older restored sites (5-8 years). Restored sites had a 9-fold increase in the proportion of native seed mix species relative to newly established sites, suggesting multiple rounds of rototilling may have depleted the invasive seed bank and provide capacity for the native soil seed bank to build-up. In Chapter 3, I designed an experiment to manipulate seed bank density and richness from curated native seed mix species on the germination and biomass of a targeted invader, Cirsium arvense. Higher native seed density and richness negatively impact only invader biomass through different indirect pathways. These findings suggest a dense, multifunctional, and species-rich seed mix can prevent incipient biological invasions at an early plant stage. In Chapter 4, I surveyed mature plant communities in the same plots as I sampled soil seed banks. Using composite metrics that combine community biomass and species richness, invasibility was negatively correlated with denser seed banks, although this is mediated by soil manipulation. In Chapter 5, I explored landscape scenarios on how neighbouring UGSs facilitate the dispersal of Vincetoxicum rossicum seeds as changes in potential functional connectivity. Using habitat suitability and connectivity modelling, most sections of the Meadoway and surrounding landscape matrix represents resistance barriers (e.g., impervious surfaces), corresponding with a small negligible impact from additional UGS development. In sum, I show that invasibility within urban meadows depends on the soil seed bank, planned soil manipulation from rototilling, and competition from native seed mix species.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.043
Threshold uncertainty score0.086

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.026
GPT teacher head0.251
Teacher spread0.225 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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