MEETING IN A MEADOW
Creating a buzz through brainstorming for a common Museum Island
16 September 2019 | Hovedøya | Oslo
Meeting in a Madow is a collaboration between Landscape Learn and Kulturetaten, Oslo’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. Under the umbrella of the Inger Munch’s Pier project, a group of local environmental scientists, naturalists and botanists with representatives from the Munch Museum gathered in Hovedøya, a nature reserve and one of several small islands off the coast of Oslo, to discuss cross-sector opportunities and broaden the ecology of the project. The stakeholders invited included design partners, cultural institutions and scientists to discuss monitoring, educational outreach and ideas to enhance the multi-dimensional aspects of urban nature.
From the Meeting, we learned that the focus of much research at Norwegian Institute for Nature (NINA) was the multi-dimensional aspects of nature in the city, whether mitigating stormwater events, creating infiltration and soft vegetated area to slow the flow, and integrating nature to cool the city and lessen the effects of urban heat island. Outcomes of the event resulted in annual ecological monitoring of the new biodiverse calcareous meadow to better understand how micro-landscapes input into wider city context.
NINA’s annual surveys look to monitor urban bee populations and soil moisture content in relation to urban cooling. Despite the Islands limited size and inhospitable location, notably two new species of solitary bees from last year’s survey were recorded. One of which is considered threatened on the Norwegian IUCN list. As a demonstration urban pollinator habitat, researcher Markus Sydenham notes it is ‘very reassuring to know that installing a meadow like this can help even rare and threatened bees’.
