Zander S Venter
Biographic Data
| ID | 7860653 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zander S Venter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zander S |
| FAMILY NAME | Venter |
| SIGNATURE | VENTER Z S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian Institute for Nature Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2638-7162 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Comparing the benefits of native and novel ecosystems as urban nature-based solutions
Assessing recreationists’ preferences of the landscape and species using crowdsourced images and machine learning
Crowdsourced images and machine learning help identify recreationists’ preferences. • Open landscape views images surpass species images on both Flickr and Wikiloc. • Flickr and Wikiloc differ in the species photographed. Crowdsourced data are now well-established for assessing cultural ecosystem services (CES). In rural areas, understanding which land covers people prefer to recreate in, and how these land covers provide different CES, is necess…
Impacts of forest clear-cutting on recreational activity
People prefer intact forests, but there is little research on behavioural avoidance of forest clear-cuts. • We used before-after-control-impact design using 2.7 M recreational activities from Strava across 10,781 forest clear-cuts. • We found a negative effect on total activity, but positive effect on skiing. • Clear-cutting impacts on recreation were more pronounced near urban areas. • Implications for trade-offs between provisioning and cultura…
Children’s Nature Use and Related Constraints
A growing number of research studies show that children spend less time in natural environments, which may have detrimental effects on children's mental and physical health. This study explores changes in children's (6-12 years) use of nearby nature and constraints on playing in nature between 2013 and 2023. We apply an ecological approach, including individual, social, and structural constraints on outdoor play. The study is based on national su…
Daytime cooling efficiencies of urban trees derived from land surface temperature are much higher than those for air temperature
Accurately capturing the impact of urban trees on temperature can help optimize urban heat mitigation strategies. Recently, there has been widespread use of remotely sensed land surface temperature ( T s ) to quantify the cooling efficiency (CE) of urban trees. However, remotely sensed T s reflects emitted radiation from the surface of an object seen from the point of view of the thermal sensor, which is not a good proxy for the air temperature (…
Children’s and Adolescents’ Use of Nature During the Covid-19 Pandemic in a Very Green Country
Play, physical activity, and social interaction with other children in nature are important for healthy and social development in childhood and adolescence. The extent to which lockdown policies during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way children engaged in outdoor activities remains unclear, especially in a country with free access to abundant nature during the pandemic. We performed a national survey of parents ( n = 1002) in Norway in Janua…
Bias and precision of crowdsourced recreational activity data from Strava
Recreational activity is the single most valuable ecosystem service in many developed countries with a range of benefits for public health. Crowdsourced recreational activity data is increasingly being adopted in management and monitoring of urban landscapes, however inherent biases in the data make it difficult to generalize patterns to the total population. We used in-situ observations and questionnaires to quantify accuracy in Strava data - a …
Priority maps for pollinator habitat enhancement schemes in semi-natural grasslands
Conserving semi-natural grasslands, a threatened habitat type in European landscapes, is increasingly recognized as a measure to conserve pollinators. Our aim was to test if (a) prediction maps of solitary bee species richness could be used to rank semi-natural grasslands in terms of their potential for supporting wild bees, and (b) if such predictions extend current assessment criteria that determine which grasslands are eligible for being liste…
High resolution prediction maps of solitary bee diversity can guide conservation measures
Wild bees are key ecosystem components making their decline a cause for concern. An effective measure to increase wild bee diversity is to enhance plant diversity. However, the effect on bee diversity of augmenting plant diversity depends on site-specific environmental conditions. We aimed to make spatial predictions of where: (a) environmental conditions maximize bee diversity, so that such areas can be prioritized for augmenting plant diversity…
Crowdsourced air temperatures contrast satellite measures of the urban heat island and its mechanisms
Satellites overestimate urban heat islands.
Back to nature
In Oslo, as elsewhere, the COVID-19 outbreak and the following lockdown measures during spring 2020 led to increased use of urban green infrastructure. Whether this has led to more durable changes in recreation patterns remains an open question. We used mobile tracking data from 53,000 STRAVA users to explore the longevity of increases in recreational activity. We compared 2020 activity levels relative to a weather benchmark (i.e. baseline), defi…
Mobility in Blue-Green Spaces Does Not Predict Covid-19 Transmission
Mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic ostensibly prevented the public from transmitting the disease in public places, but they also hampered outdoor recreation, despite the importance of blue-green spaces (e.g., parks and natural areas) for physical and mental health. We assess whether restrictions on human movement, particularly in blue-green spaces, affected the transmission of COVID-19. Our assessment uses a spatially resolved dat…
Covid-19 lockdowns cause global air pollution declines
The lockdown response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused an unprecedented reduction in global economic and transport activity. We test the hypothesis that this has reduced tropospheric and ground-level air pollution concentrations, using satellite data and a network of >10,000 air quality stations. After accounting for the effects of meteorological variability, we find declines in the population-weighted concentration of ground-lev…
Green Apartheid
Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributi…
Urban nature in a time of crisis
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it significant changes to human mobility patterns and working environments. We aimed to explore how social distancing measures affected recreational use of urban green space during the partial lockdown in Oslo, Norway. Mobile tracking data from thousands of recreationists were used to analyze high resolution spatio-temporal changes in activity. We estimated that outdoor recreational ac…
No prominent works on this page.
Covid-19 lockdowns cause global air pollution declines
The lockdown response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused an unprecedented reduction in global economic and transport activity. We test the hypothesis that this has reduced tropospheric and ground-level air pollution concentrations, using satellite data and a network of >10,000 air quality stations. After accounting for the effects of meteorological variability, we find declines in the population-weighted concentration of ground-lev…
Green Apartheid
Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributi…
Urban nature in a time of crisis
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it significant changes to human mobility patterns and working environments. We aimed to explore how social distancing measures affected recreational use of urban green space during the partial lockdown in Oslo, Norway. Mobile tracking data from thousands of recreationists were used to analyze high resolution spatio-temporal changes in activity. We estimated that outdoor recreational ac…
Crowdsourced air temperatures contrast satellite measures of the urban heat island and its mechanisms
Satellites overestimate urban heat islands.
Back to nature
In Oslo, as elsewhere, the COVID-19 outbreak and the following lockdown measures during spring 2020 led to increased use of urban green infrastructure. Whether this has led to more durable changes in recreation patterns remains an open question. We used mobile tracking data from 53,000 STRAVA users to explore the longevity of increases in recreational activity. We compared 2020 activity levels relative to a weather benchmark (i.e. baseline), defi…
Mobility in Blue-Green Spaces Does Not Predict Covid-19 Transmission
Mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic ostensibly prevented the public from transmitting the disease in public places, but they also hampered outdoor recreation, despite the importance of blue-green spaces (e.g., parks and natural areas) for physical and mental health. We assess whether restrictions on human movement, particularly in blue-green spaces, affected the transmission of COVID-19. Our assessment uses a spatially resolved dat…
Priority maps for pollinator habitat enhancement schemes in semi-natural grasslands
Conserving semi-natural grasslands, a threatened habitat type in European landscapes, is increasingly recognized as a measure to conserve pollinators. Our aim was to test if (a) prediction maps of solitary bee species richness could be used to rank semi-natural grasslands in terms of their potential for supporting wild bees, and (b) if such predictions extend current assessment criteria that determine which grasslands are eligible for being liste…
High resolution prediction maps of solitary bee diversity can guide conservation measures
Wild bees are key ecosystem components making their decline a cause for concern. An effective measure to increase wild bee diversity is to enhance plant diversity. However, the effect on bee diversity of augmenting plant diversity depends on site-specific environmental conditions. We aimed to make spatial predictions of where: (a) environmental conditions maximize bee diversity, so that such areas can be prioritized for augmenting plant diversity…
Bias and precision of crowdsourced recreational activity data from Strava
Recreational activity is the single most valuable ecosystem service in many developed countries with a range of benefits for public health. Crowdsourced recreational activity data is increasingly being adopted in management and monitoring of urban landscapes, however inherent biases in the data make it difficult to generalize patterns to the total population. We used in-situ observations and questionnaires to quantify accuracy in Strava data - a …
Daytime cooling efficiencies of urban trees derived from land surface temperature are much higher than those for air temperature
Accurately capturing the impact of urban trees on temperature can help optimize urban heat mitigation strategies. Recently, there has been widespread use of remotely sensed land surface temperature ( T s ) to quantify the cooling efficiency (CE) of urban trees. However, remotely sensed T s reflects emitted radiation from the surface of an object seen from the point of view of the thermal sensor, which is not a good proxy for the air temperature (…
Children’s and Adolescents’ Use of Nature During the Covid-19 Pandemic in a Very Green Country
Play, physical activity, and social interaction with other children in nature are important for healthy and social development in childhood and adolescence. The extent to which lockdown policies during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way children engaged in outdoor activities remains unclear, especially in a country with free access to abundant nature during the pandemic. We performed a national survey of parents ( n = 1002) in Norway in Janua…
Assessing recreationists’ preferences of the landscape and species using crowdsourced images and machine learning
Crowdsourced images and machine learning help identify recreationists’ preferences. • Open landscape views images surpass species images on both Flickr and Wikiloc. • Flickr and Wikiloc differ in the species photographed. Crowdsourced data are now well-established for assessing cultural ecosystem services (CES). In rural areas, understanding which land covers people prefer to recreate in, and how these land covers provide different CES, is necess…
Impacts of forest clear-cutting on recreational activity
People prefer intact forests, but there is little research on behavioural avoidance of forest clear-cuts. • We used before-after-control-impact design using 2.7 M recreational activities from Strava across 10,781 forest clear-cuts. • We found a negative effect on total activity, but positive effect on skiing. • Clear-cutting impacts on recreation were more pronounced near urban areas. • Implications for trade-offs between provisioning and cultura…
Children’s Nature Use and Related Constraints
A growing number of research studies show that children spend less time in natural environments, which may have detrimental effects on children's mental and physical health. This study explores changes in children's (6-12 years) use of nearby nature and constraints on playing in nature between 2013 and 2023. We apply an ecological approach, including individual, social, and structural constraints on outdoor play. The study is based on national su…
Comparing the benefits of native and novel ecosystems as urban nature-based solutions
Geography (12 works) · Urban Green Space and Health (10 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Biology (6 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Environmental health (5 works) · Environmental Science (5 works) · Recreation (5 works) · Pandemic (4 works)