Access to fresh food and green spaces is vital for well-being, yet downtown Cincinnati remains a food desert. This capstone explores how integrating living art and edible plants into urban spaces improves people’s mental health and well-being. Through the design of a community garden and a living art installation, this project blends horticulture, public health, and art to promote food access, reduce stress, and foster community a vibrant, restorative environment.
This research project investigates and improves the processes of native seed collection and native plant cultivation specific to the Ohio region. The overarching goal is advancing urban biodiversity initiatives, focused on flora indigenous to the Cincinnati area. The project delves into current research gaps and challenges associated with native seed collection and cultivation methodologies. Additionally, this research explores the potential ecological benefits and challenges associated with integrating native plant species into urban landscapes. This project researches 13 plant species in this context. The target outcomes of this research include a refined understanding of native plant adaptation to urban settings, improved conservation strategies, and actionable guidelines for urban planners and horticulturalists. This research contributes knowledge to the ongoing efforts of promoting biodiversity within urban landscapes, fostering a more sustainable coexistence between human developments and Ohio's native flora. The final result of this project is a field guide with sections on plant identification, seed harvesting, seed storage, cultivation needs, and common ecoregions for each plant.
This Poster describes a collaborative research project between the Culley and Tepe labs in the UC Department of Biology and UC Libraries Digital Scholarship Center presented at the 2017 UC Data Day ( https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/blogs/dataday/past-data-days/). The project explores publication patterns of research involving hotspot areas of biodiversity and if researchers from developing countries which tend to have most of the biodiversity hotspots, are adequately represented as authors in the scientific literature indexed in Scopus (TM-Elsevier), JSTOR, and PubMed.
