Ecological Sustainability and Urban Green Space	RINGKØBING PAPERS Water Management Landuse Planning Waste Management Area Resources Habitat Quality
Urban Density and Green Structure Case Studies Ringkøbing -DK Stocksbridge -UK Oslo -Forsheimer -N Poland- Green networks -PL Tidaholm & Trollhatten -S Social Impacts of sustainable Housing Oslo - city centre -N Helsinki - Espoo -SU Political Instruments Norway - N Click a Topic QUIT RINGKØBING DENMARK Habitat quality menu Vegetation as an indicator Pilot Study Methodology Findings & Conclusion References Click a Topic	KØGE - The pilot study for the Ringkøbing Case Study To access this information use the bottom left menu to move between Sections and the arrows to move to the next page As part of the process of developing methods for mapping habitat qualities of urban green areas, a pilot study was carried out in neighborhoods in Køge and Ballerup municipalities. It comprised a vegetation study, as well as a study of avifauna. The avifauna study (Haakansson, 1995) was included in order to check the findings of the vegetation study. The findings of the avifauna study generally supported the knowledge that the vegetation is of major importance to urban fauna, and to the diversity of structure, heights and species, as being some of the most significant variables, which supplement the total area coverage and distribution of vegetation. The study especially added to existing knowledge of urban wildlife in relation to different grass management. A valuable conclusion was that in urban situations, the bird life in meadow grass areas, which are cut only once or at most a couple of times a year, exceeded that of lawn areas by 25%. This was unexpected, since urban grass areas are generally disturbed by both human use and dogs and cats. Our pilot study did not support the importance of water features for birds other than water foul. However, this question is so well documented in other studies that we still assume that water constitutes a major habitat quality. continued