Christoph Küffer Schumacher


Last Name

Küffer Schumacher

First Name

Christoph

ORCID

0000-0001-6701-0703

Organisational unit

01709 - Lehre Umweltsystemwissenschaften

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2008 - 200912020 - 20245
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Publications 1 - 6 of 6
  • Why daylight should be a priority for urban planning
    Item type: Journal Article
    Volf, Carlo; Bueno, Bruno; Edwards, Peter; et al. (2024)
    Journal of Urban Management
    Daylight is essential for ecosystems and for the physical and mental well-being of people. In densely populated cities, only a small proportion of total daylight is available to support urban greenery and most people have little daily exposure to natural daylight. Despite this, many cities have followed a strategy of densification as a way of preventing urban sprawl and reducing energy consumption. In this article, we review the biological importance of daylight and show that urban densification leads to a reduction in the daylight available for both people and nature. We conclude that daylight in cities should be treated as a limiting resource that needs to be planned and managed carefully, much like water or energy. We suggest elements for a policy framework aimed at optimizing urban daylight, including how to determine daylight needs, how to determine the maximum viable urban density, and policy options for built and unbuilt areas.
  • Moving Toward Global Strategies for Managing Invasive Alien Species
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Meyerson, Laura A.; Pauchard, Aníbal; Brundu, Giuseppe; et al. (2022)
    Global Plant Invasions
    As human communities become increasingly interconnected through transport and trade, there has been a concomitant rise in both accidental and intentional species introductions, resulting in biological invasions. A warming global climate and the rapid movement of people and vessels across the globe have opened new air and sea routes, accelerated propagule pressure, and altered habitat disturbance regimes, all of which act synergistically to trigger and sustain invasions. The complexity and interconnectedness of biological invasions with commerce, culture, and human-mediated natural disturbances make prevention and management of invasive alien species (IAS) particularly challenging. Voluntary actions by single countries have proven to be insufficient in addressing biological invasions. Large gaps between science, management, and policy at various geopolitical scales still exist and necessitate an urgent need for more integrative approach across multiple scales and multiple stakeholder groups to bridge those gaps and reduce the impacts of biological invasions on biodiversity and human well-being. An evidence-based global strategy is therefore needed to predict, prevent, and manage the impacts of IAS. Here we define global strategies as frameworks for evidence-based visions, policy agreements, and commitments that address the patterns, mechanisms, and impact of biological invasions. Many existing global, regional, and thematic initiatives provide a strong foundation to inform a global IAS strategy. We propose five recommendations to progress these toward global strategies against biological invasions, including better standards and tools for long-term monitoring, techniques for evaluation of impacts across taxa and regions, modular regulatory frameworks that integrate incentives and compliance mechanisms with respect to diverse transcultural needs, biosecurity awareness and measures, and synergies with other conservation strategies. This proposed approach for IAS is inclusive, adaptive, and flexible and moves toward global strategies for better preventing and managing biological invasions. As existing research-policy-management networks mature and others emerge, the accelerating need for effective global strategies against biological invasions can finally be met.
  • Rapid upwards spread of non-native plants in mountains across continents
    Item type: Journal Article
    Iseli, Evelin; Chisholm, Chelsea; Lenoir, Jonathan; et al. (2023)
    Nature Ecology & Evolution
    High-elevation ecosystems are among the few ecosystems worldwide that are not yet heavily invaded by non-native plants. This is expected to change as species expand their range limits upwards to fill their climatic niches and respond to ongoing anthropogenic disturbances. Yet, whether and how quickly these changes are happening has only been assessed in a few isolated cases. Starting in 2007, we conducted repeated surveys of non-native plant distributions along mountain roads in 11 regions from 5 continents. We show that over a 5- to 10-year period, the number of non-native species increased on average by approximately 16% per decade across regions. The direction and magnitude of upper range limit shifts depended on elevation across all regions. Supported by a null-model approach accounting for range changes expected by chance alone, we found greater than expected upward shifts at lower/mid elevations in at least seven regions. After accounting for elevation dependence, significant average upward shifts were detected in a further three regions (revealing evidence for upward shifts in 10 of 11 regions). Together, our results show that mountain environments are becoming increasingly exposed to biological invasions, emphasizing the need to monitor and prevent potential biosecurity issues emerging in high-elevation ecosystems.
  • Rethinking Evidence Practices for Environmental Decision-Making in the Anthropocene
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Küffer Schumacher, Christoph (2023)
    Evidence Contestation
    This chapter discusses the development of invasive species research and policy throughout the 20th century as a paradigmatic model case for reflecting evidence practices and evidence contestation in ecology and environmental decision-making. It reviews how the initial framing of invasive species research and policy formulated in the 1950s–1980s was increasingly contested and how invasion scientists responded to growing dissent and post-normality. It concludes with the proposition that consensus on environmental action, despite uncertain facts and pluralism, depends on the continuous nurturing of an ecological citizenship that builds on a carefully interwoven web of ecological knowledge, social institutions and cultural practices. This can only be reached through collaboration among the ecological, social and human sciences, the arts, nature-based practitioners and civil society to simultaneously address the embeddedness of ecological knowledge in social and cultural contexts and the embeddedness of social and cultural practices in an ecological lifeworld.
  • Plant sciences for the Anthropocene: What can we learn from research in urban areas?
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Küffer Schumacher, Christoph (2020)
    Plants, People, Planet
  • Seychelles Plant Conservation Research Workshop 2007
    Item type: Other Publication
    Küffer Schumacher, Christoph; Matatiken, Denis; Beaver, Katy; et al. (2008)
    Kapisen
Publications 1 - 6 of 6