INTRODUCTION

The earth's Biosphere radiates into multiple arms of biodiversity, some well-studied, some still to be
discovered. A beaming range of organisms all an aftereffect of evolution but functioning in their own
ways. but what makes biodiversity truly significant is the vital role it plays in building and
maintaining the ecosystem. This ecosystem in turn provides a lot of benefits to the human society
like clean air, recreation, ground water holding capacity, agricultural boons, pollinators, and a whole
range of animal and plant products. Therefore, biodiversity forms one of the most important bases
of human life on our planet (Patrick, R., 1997, pg.15)[4]
 
The health of an ecosystem depends on its ability to maintain Its organisational structure and
Recoverability after experiencing stresses (Sahana, M.,2022, pg. 2) [3] In an urban setting an
ecosystem will have added disadvantages than just natural stresses, like Water pollution, toxic-run
off, Soil pollution, Deforestation, Poaching and a lot more that humanity has been accumulating for
decades, Ultimately this had lead everyday to be an accelerated step towards global warming. Global
warming has already contributed its bit to the environment in many ways, one we might be very
familiar with is the Bleaching of around 50% of the coral reefs in the great barrier reef (Hughes, T.P.
2017. Pg.2)[6] But nature always has its way to kick back into life when humanity harms it. A study by
the scientists of University of Newcastle, conducted on frogs showed that among Australian
Anurans, the female frog under finite resources (due to drought) towards reproduction produces
larger eggs in smaller quantities producing a better quality of offspring batch due to the risk of water
drying up (Gould, J.2022, pg 1, 8)[1] This shows how life forms can adapt to stresses which overtime
causes evolutionary changes which expands the biodiversity.
 
It is important to investigate the biodiversity measures of an urban greenspaces primarily because of
2 reasons, the first being That urban greenspaces can be an escape place of recreation for city
inhabitants & can also contribute to cleaner air in the city.
The second reason being, during the formation of a city when many people start settling into the city
(usually causing to areal expansion), it destroys a lot of the domestic flora and fauna. And the city is
finally left with distorted scarce vegetation, and its green spaces. These green spaces might be the
only places conserving local biodiversity at the end. Many fauna endemic to that place settles in
these places making it a biodiversity hotspot. And biodiversity hotspots are under high risk due to
global warming (Masson-Delmotte, V., 2018, pg.11) [2]

Invertebrates are a great way of measuring and quantifying overall biodiversity due to their
overwhelmingly dominant contribution to biodiversity because of their great abundance, diversity
and functional importance, their sensitivity to perturbation, and the ease with which they can be
sampled. Moreover, all the newly introduced simpler approaches of sampling and processing has
proved to provide effective results (Andersen, A.N. 2004, Pg 87-89) [5]

In this study we will be looking at 2 urban greenspaces : the first being Centennial parklands (CP) and
the second being Randwick environmental park (REP). CP was originally a system of wetlands
originating from a natural spring called Lachlan swamp. The water from the Lachlan swamp and the
connected ponds were used from 1837-1859 when in 1820’s the Tank stream was insufficient and
polluted. This water system and some other ponds from upper botany catchment and all the land
around it was designed into CP by 1899 (Centennial parklands, website) [8].
Whereas REP is an Ephemeral wetland formed from a depression area around 1940’s later occupied
by Randwick barracks during WW2 around 1950 & starting 1960 due to storm water runoff it was
filled with water and between 2000’s-2010 The Randwick city council defended the conservation
values of the park, ensuring the remaining bushland was preserved, zoned the bushland for
environmental protection and conditioned the Randwick Barracks’ development to protect the
environmental values of the reserve.( Randwick city council, website) [7]
CP has a natural spring, big land area, a lot of introduced plant species, open and non-native
artificially gardened setting & REP has native species, small area and an ephemeral water system &
the bush land is all fenced up and both these greenspaces are facing almost equal urban exposure. In
CP vehicles and pets cause a lot of pollution and in REP pets & close exposure to houses and urban
settlement causes pollution. Therefore, these parklands are perfect places to do a comparative study
of biodiversity in urban greenspaces by measuring invertebrates present in the leaf litter of both
locations.
It's possible that the invertebrate amount might be same if the sample in CP is collected from
Lachlan swamp otherwise it is most likely that REP samples might have more samples.

REFERENCES

[1] Gould, J., Beranek, C., Valdez, J. and Mahony, M., 2022. Quantity versus quality: A balance
between egg and clutch size among Australian amphibians in relation to other life‐history
variables. Austral Ecology, 47(3), pp.685-697.
 
[2] Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pörtner, H.O., Roberts, D., Skea, J., Shukla, P.R., Pirani, A.,
Moufouma-Okia, W., Péan, C., Pidcock, R. and Connors, S., 2018. Global warming of 1.5
C. An IPCC Special Report on the impact

[3] Sahana, M., Saini, M., Areendran, G., Imdad, K., Sarma, K. and Sajjad, H., 2022. Assessing
Wetland ecosystem health in Sundarban Biosphere Reserve using pressure-state-response
model and geospatial techniques. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and
Environment, 26, p.100754.\
 
[4] Patrick, R., 1997. Biodiversity: Why is it important. Biodiversity II: understanding and
protecting our biological resources, pp.15-24.

[5] Andersen, A.N., Fisher, A., Hoffmann, B.D., Read, J.L. and Richards, R., 2004. Use of
terrestrial invertebrates for biodiversity monitoring in Australian rangelands, with particular
reference to ants. Austral ecology, 29(1), pp.87-92.
 
[6] Hughes, T.P., Kerry, J.T., Álvarez-Noriega, M., Álvarez-Romero, J.G., Anderson, K.D., Baird,
A.H., Babcock, R.C., Beger, M., Bellwood, D.R., Berkelmans, R. and Bridge, T.C., 2017. Global
warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Nature, 543(7645), pp.373-377.
 
[7] Randwick environmental park (website) n.d. URL: REP-Site-Information.pdf (nsw.gov.au)

[8] Centennial parklands (website) n.d. URL’s: Visit - Centennial Parklands - Growing Centennial
Park - Centennial Parklands Stories - Centennial Parklands