Human welfare depends on the health of nature. Decades of ill-conceived management practices caused a decline in the quality of human life, as well as in biological and cultural diversity. Simultaneously, they increased social and ecological risks. For instance, mismanagement of urban rivers jeopardizes their ecological health and ability to provide ecosystem services. While demands for responsible urban riverscape design that fulfill both human and ecosystem needs are increasing, explicit recommendations to achieve these ambitious goals are still lacking. We present a first attempt of a conceptualization of Human–River Encounter Sites for urban rivers that targets reconciliation between humans and nature within urban river corridors. It builds upon the River Culture Concept with literature reviews and experiences from river restoration projects. We identify six tenets that are important to develop guidelines for Human–River Encounter Sites: health, safety, functionality, accessibility, collaboration, and awareness. This paper presents how these tenets can collectively help to harmonize the needs of citizens and biota, and to mitigate the current urban river crisis. This contribution feeds the debate on sustainable socio-ecological management of urban rivers and provides guidelines for the implementation of future urban river restorations and management efforts.

Continuous-based predictors of habitat characteristics derived from satellite imagery are increasingly used in species distribution models (SDM). This is especially the case of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which provides estimates of vegetation productivity and heterogeneity. However, when NDVI predictors are incorporated into SDM, synchrony between biological observations and image acquisition must be questionned. Due to seasonal variations of NDVI during the year, landscape patterns of habitats are revealed differently from one date to another leading to variations in models’ performance. In this paper, we investigated the influence of acquisition time period of NDVI to explain and predict bird community patterns over France. We examined if the NDVI acquisition period that best fit the bird data depends on the dominant land cover context. We also compared models based on single time period of NDVI with one model built from the Dynamic Habitat Index (DHI) components which summarize variations in vegetation phenology throughout the year from the fraction of radiation absorbed by the canopy (fPAR). Bird species richness was calculated as response variable for 759 plots of 4 km${}^2$ from the French Breeding Bird Survey. Bird specialists and generalists to habitat were considered. NDVI and DHI predictors were both derived from MODIS products. For NDVI, five time periods in 2010 were compared, from late winter to begin of autumn. A climate predictor was also used and Generalized Additive Models were fitted to explain and predict bird species richness. Results showed that NDVI-based proxies of dominant habitat identity and spatial heterogeneity explain more bird community patterns than DHI-based proxies of annual productivity and seasonnality. We also found that models’ performance was both time and context-dependent, varying according to the bird groups. In general, best time period of NDVI did not match with the acquisition period of bird data because in case of synchrony, differences in habitats are less pronounced. These findings suggest that the most powerful approach to estimate bird community patterns is the simplest one. It only requires NDVI predictors from a single appropriate time period, in addition to climate, which makes the approach very operational.

A challenge for urban ecology is to reduce biotic homogenisation by promoting plant diversity from local to city scales. As ecological and social components constantly interact in cities, an urban landscape characterisation reflecting socio-spatial functioning seems essential. However, spatially explicit description of cities at a relevant scale for urban planning are uncommon in ecological studies. Here, we explored a new approach based on the city-block scale, common in urban geography and planning, to directly link urban uses and patterns of herbaceous plant communities. We characterised all city blocks of a medium-sized French city (Blois). We inventoried grassland and meadows in 129 city blocks (10% of the whole city) for seven public and private urban uses (collective housing, individual housing, industrial, public service, park, land reserve, and road verge). We measured alpha diversity, community composition, regional originality of urban uses, and beta diversity between them. Urban land reserved for future development and parks harbour unique community composition within the city. Collective and individual housings have the same average alpha diversity, but the variability in community composition was higher for individual housing blocks. School and industrial city blocks have important alpha diversity and regional originality. Road verges have the highest alpha diversity but low regional originality and many common urban and regional species. Large green spaces with original communities should be protected during urban densification. The verticalization of residential housing could be an efficient means of internal urban densification if the lowest level of management intensity is promoted to maintain diversified vegetation. Some little-studied uses (schools, industrial city blocks) present opportunities to impede urban homogenisation.