The main goal for designers of bee landscapes should be to create highly functional pollinator landscapes. In other words, designers should build landscapes which are appealing for bees to feed, reproduce, and live in. Good habitat design must be local area specific and consider the site’s context. For example, plants should be suitable for predicted California’s future climactic conditions, in many cases, be less dependent on water and more resilient to drought stress . Designers should aim to compensate for land cover which is not conducive to making suitable habitat. Thus, designers need to look at ways to reduce the footprint of impervious surfaces, such as roads, roofs, building sides, among many others. There is a need to convert wasted landscape space into habitat for bee habitat resiliency in the face of climate change in human-dominated landscapes. The Earth is undergoing a new epoch, influenced mainly by human activity, coined the Anthropocene . Similarly, the vast majority of Earth’s landscapes have been shaped by humans, coined the Anthroscape . Furthermore, creating good habitat is only one part of the solution for creating effective native bee designs. Showcasing bee educational information, such as scientific findings is necessary to increase public awareness, interest and conservation. This work begins by investigating the degree to which urban human dominated bee habitats represent ecological bee refugia in California. Then, landscape designs are conceptualized on various improvements of human landscape types. Planning for native bee conservation under the ecological threat of climate change requires examining ecosystems from a target bee’s perspective. Solving novel ecosystem issues requires holistic study, based on scientific data to meet the needs of native bees. Moreover, black flower bucket bees represent a large number of different organisms, therefore, it is impossible to design for all bees at once.

Instead, focal bee species will be selected based on the data and results from Dissertation Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and with interest from student ecological designers. Designs will focus around the biological needs of focal bee genera, with an emphasis on those which seem to have potential for maintaining ecosystem services in urban ecosystems. Ideally, focal bee genera conservation will act as an umbrella, also helping to support bees which have narrower habitat requirements. Selection of plants for bees was an important element of bee habitat design, seen in Chapters 1 and 2, but this research goes further, aiming to teach site visitors about bees. Design is utilized to captivate, inspire and educate humans about the fantastic pollinators that we depend on. Ecologically functional faunal bee urban landscapes, built upon the principles of resiliency, will help to guarantee pollination ecosystem services in the future.This research concludes by presenting strategically determined design concepts as examples of how to implement the best possible bee habitat plans. Designs focus on providing the best possible plant selection for temporal continuity, spatial habitat continuity, creativity, public education and artistic themes. Examples of design intervention will be made to demonstrate how different degrees of designing for bees could be achieved with varying results in the real world. Design holds a key role not just in providing habitat, but also in promoting education and communication in memorable ways. Designers have the power to alter the transparency of their landscapes’ functions , and bee landscapes must be thought of in this way to help protect against the uncertainties of climate change. Through striving to create high quality habitat and increase landscape literacy this research aims to promote pollination ecosystem services into the future.The University of California Davis Arboretum and Public Garden was the study site for all fieldwork and analysis completed in Dissertation Chapters 1 and 2.

This chapter deals with the Arboretum site too, but also examines case studies of the ecological role of bees over the greater landscape extent in the Californian cities including: Mill Valley, Glendora, andSan Luis Obispo . While the Arboretum study was in the order of a couple miles, the subsequent urban studies were in the order of tens of miles.Target bee species were identified for conservation based on the results in Chapters 1 and 2. Bee genera which were found capable of utilizing urban ecosystem landscapes have been emphasized in conservation efforts for this research, including: Andrena, Apis mellifera, Bombus, Megachile, Osmia, and Xylocopa. All of these bees are listed as common bee genera found throughout the state of California . These bees provide pollination ecosystem services despite the unique qualities of urban bee habitat. We believe that prioritizing pollination is most important when facing the extreme influences and danger of climate change today. While it would be more ideal to plan for conservation of all bees, that is likely not possible or conducive to conserving pollinator landscape functionality. Since so many ecosystems and portions of them are dependent on pollination occurring, it is absolutely essential to conserve the pollination functionality above all other goals. Bees which are exceedingly prone to habitat fragmentation and exhibit highly specialized feeding behaviors are likely not good candidates for human-dominated ecosystem services conservation efforts. For example, obligate vernal pool bees, consisting of Andrena species: A. blennospermatis, A. submoesta, and A. puthua; A. limnanthis, A. duboisi, A. lativentris . While the most specialized bees may seem be good focal bee candidates because of their extreme geographic limitations and obligate feeding nature we argue that this would not be a good strategy. Designing for specialist bees, such as vernal pool bees would be inappropriate for most other bees and not focus on the goal of functional pollination in urban areas. Instead, extreme specialists, such as vernal pool bees should have their own conservation areas and strategies, aside from the urban bee communities and habitats.

A balanced approach, therefore, would employ a coarse and fine filter conservation strategy for preserving pollination ecosystem services. In other words, ecological design strategies should be employed that conserves a variety of bees, both generalists and specialists. Conservation planning exclusively for specialists such as obligate Andrena vernal pool bees should be detrimental for most other bee types, as they have a high degree of specialization. Instead, the focal bee must be chosen with landscapes in mind. Special conservation areas, such as vernal pools, would have their own conservation plans, while anthrocentric, human-dominated, landscapes would focus on focal bees capable of providing pollination to provide resiliency against the harsh environmental conditions facing us in the Anthropocene . Human dominated landscapes, also known as the anthroscape , will require pollination conservation plans which would encompass bees capable of pollination across the greater landscape. Functional pollination would help to ensure that ecological biodiversity remains stable, along with all the other plants and animals that depend on pollination. Therefore, by choosing strategically which bees to focus on, designers can help to build resilient bee pollinated landscapes now, and for the future.Target bee species were identified for conservation based on the results in Chapters 1 and 2. Bee genera which were found capable of utilizing urban ecosystem landscapes have been emphasized in conservation efforts for this research, including: Andrena, Apis mellifera, Bombus, Megachile, Osmia, and Xylocopa. All of these bees are listed as common bee genera found throughout the state of California . Furthermore, author KC studied the interest level with which student designers were attracted to work with. There were obvious trends among landscape architecture undergraduate college students for particular bee physical and lifestyle traits. The above mentioned commonly found native bee genera were also quite popular with students as subjects for design projects. Thus, while some bees, such as Halictus, were excellent foragers in earlier chapters, square black flower bucket they were not popular with student designers, most likely due to their relatively hairless bodies and subterranean nesting style. Other less popular bee genera included: very small Lasioglossum, especially the tiny Dialictus subgenus types and/or small and hairless Hylaeus , Cuckoo bees were vastly unpopular, and never utilized for a project at all. Overall, students were instead, drawn to bees with special attributes, such as: hairy, colorful, robustly bodied bee types . Notably students were commonly drawn to working with European honey bees, Apis mellifera, instead of with native bees. This is likely because most people think that European honey bees are quintessentially conventional. We all know the patterns of honeycomb and images of hives, and bee keeping. So, even students who were educated about the importance of bees native to California, still clung to knowledge about these naturalized bees at times, despite their biology and ecology differing from the local abundance of bee varieties.

This could also be due in part to the media attention given to Apis mellifera, to “save the bees”. There are countless social media trends on this theme, many, possibly most, of which present misinformation. It is clear that people are not aware of the diversity of native bees in our own landscapes in California. Even designers are not aware of biological and ecological differences and needing education and scientific themed projects. We must work hard to work beyond the “seductive” honeycomb patterns, black and yellow bee cartoon images, social hives, and posts about dandelions “saving the bees”. After all, which bees are we trying to save? How can we do it? Landscape researchers are calling for action on better landscape architecture education for college students . Part of that climate education should be about how bee pollination network resiliency is necessary. Habitat mapping for any animals often begins with mapping landscape vegetation and then assessing how the landscape’s vegetative form and properties meet the needs of the animal species models. Furthermore, Chapter 2 aimed for scientifically made, high resolution maps in the order of miles. However, in Chapter 3, these same mapping techniques and testing were completed in Chapter 2 could not be done over a larger spatial extent with the technology available today. Therefore, Chapter 3 aims to analyze more spatially extensive areas, but in doing so, with lower floristic resolution. Additionally, this paper focuses on recommending design solutions to existing urban bee habitat shortcomings. This research analyzes the patterns of urban vegetation in relation to native bee habitat area. It is accepted that urban areas have different bee community compositions than wild land areas . Next an extrapolation of the ecological function of gardens found in Chapters 1 and 2 to the larger landscape scale can be made to help gain understanding about how the bee meta population functions. Students were advised to assign the following habitat quality characteristics for landscape cover types: wild, agricultural, and urban. Each are described below. Wild land: Excellent habitat for native bees, probably honey bees as well. Most plants peak blooming earlier in the season . Wild habitat patches are often located very far from other wild patches. Often made of hilly areas unsuitable for agricultural crop growing and/or grazing. Native plants, but interspersed commonly with non-native invasive plants as well. Fire in these areas encourages native pollinator population boosts . Agricultural land: Infrequent use for most native bees. Vast, monotonous plantings, hostile management and habitat matrix quickly changing , no place to overwinter for bees, may provide foraging habitat with juxtaposition to bee source habitat. Scale often represents a major obstacle for bees to travel through at the landscape scale, i.e., mono-cropping acts as a sink, too vast to traverse. Irrigation could allow for blooms and therefore foraging habitat while wildlands would be desiccated. Management of crops and the surrounding areas can drastically sway the quality of bee habitat ; Wilson et al., 2017; Shackelford et al., 2019. Further spatial bee habitat studies should shed light onto how urban areas function as native bee genera habitat. A focus on urban areas which are adjacent to agricultural lands seem to hold promise, as that land presents potential for urban bees to subsidize pollination ecosystem services within agricultural lands, with benefits such that hedgerows provide. Urban land: Urban land is an ecological refugia for many native bees and naturalized honey bees. The landscape matrix is highly dissected and plant palettes vary greatly, some of which provide excellent habitat for particular bee genera. It also provides a longer foraging season than wildlands, partly due to plant choices, but also use of irrigation. These planting combinations are often unique combinations and function as novel ecosystems. This land cover acts as source habitat for many bee species, helping them maintain their populations despite the juxtaposition to less hospitable landscape types.