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Urban Ecosystem Services
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We explore the potential of urban ecosystem services for improving resilience and quality of life in cities. First, we classify and categorize important ecosystem services and disservices in urban areas. Second, we describe a range of valuation approaches (cultural values, health benefits, economic costs, and resilience) for capturing the importance of urban ecosystem service multiple values. Finally, we analyze how ecosystem service assessment may inform urban planning and gov- ernance and provide practical examples from cities in Africa, Europe, and America. From our review, we find that many urban ecosystem services have already been identified, characterized and valued, and have been found to be of great value and importance for human well-being and urban resilience. We conclude that the use of the concept of urban ecosystem services can play a critical role in reconnecting cities to the biosphere, and reducing the ecological footprint and ecological debt of cities while enhancing resilience, health, and quality of life of their inhabitants.
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... Urban green infrastructure supports biodiversity and ecosystem services since it serves as habitat, regulates temperature and stormwater, improves air and water quality, and increases aesthetics [1]. With increased anthropogenic [CO 2 ], higher temperatures, changed precipitation, and more extreme events [2], functional urban ecosystems are relevant for mitigating the impacts of climate change via ecosystem services [3][4][5]. ...
... With growing initiatives to replace intensively managed lawns in cities with diverse meadows [19,25], understanding the functioning and resilience of the latter to climate change will allow for better design and more effective design and restoration of green urban spaces. If adequately implemented, urban grasslands can harbor large numbers of plant species [26], offer habitat and food for animal species [27,28], and provide numerous ecosystem services to humans [1]. ...
Urban grasslands are crucial for biodiversity and ecosystem services in cities, while little is known about their multifunctionality under climate change. Thus, we investigated the effects of simulated climate change, i.e., increased [CO2] and temperature, and reduced precipitation, on individual functions and overall multifunctionality in mesocosm grasslands sown with forbs and grasses in four different proportions aiming at mimicking road verge grassland patches. Climate change scenarios RCP2.6 (control) and RCP8.5 (worst-case) were simulated in walk-in climate chambers of an ecotron facility, and watering was manipulated for normal vs. reduced precipitation. We measured eight indicator variables of ecosystem functions based on below- and aboveground characteristics. The young grassland communities responded to higher [CO2] and warmer conditions with increased vegetation cover, height, flower production, and soil respiration. Lower precipitation affected carbon cycling in the ecosystem by reducing biomass production and soil respiration. In turn, the water regulation capacity of the grasslands depended on precipitation interacting with climate change scenario, given the enhanced water efficiency resulting from increased [CO2] under RCP8.5. Multifunctionality was negatively affected by reduced precipitation, especially under RCP2.6. Trade-offs arose among single functions that performed best in either grass- or forb-dominated grasslands. Grasslands with an even ratio of plant functional types coped better with climate change and thus are good options for increasing the benefits of urban green infrastructure. Overall, the study provides experimental evidence of the effects of climate change on the functionality of urban ecosystems. Designing the composition of urban grasslands based on ecological theory may increase their resilience to global change.
... Green spaces promote urban ecosystem services [4], namely to support biodiversity [5], ecological processes [6], or food production, e.g., urban farming [7]. At the same time, they and other urban green spaces that are built directly in contact with the soil (e.g., gardens and parks), considering their ecosystem services delivery and provisioning. ...
Cities are becoming more vulnerable to climate change and need appropriate adaptation measures. Previous studies demonstrated that urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services, improving the health and well-being of urban residents. Yet different urban green spaces provide different services—provisioning, regulating, cultural, or supporting ones. This work aims first to understand if urban green space users perceive the different supplies of provisioning and regulating services offered by different types of urban green spaces. Second, this work seeks to determine if green roof type conditions, as well as vegetation type and access, affect the users’ perceptions of the cultural ecosystem services. This work presents the results of an image-based online survey performed among 376 Portuguese undergraduate students between March and April 2021. The survey is based on nine alternative urban space designs, varying the roof access type and vegetation types. The results show a general preference for urban green spaces with more vegetation, regardless of the type of roof, and a general preference for green spaces with better accessibility. In addition, users’ preference for no-roof conditions appears to be linked to the abundance of vegetation and quality of urban design and not to awareness of an existing roof structure and its influence on the natural processes.
... Humans are dependent on nature for survival and well-being (Bolund and Hunhammar 1999;Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2013). The benefits humans derive from nature, either directly or indirectly, are known as ecosystem services (Costanza et al. 1997). ...
In this study, the capacity of the life support system in Tehran was evaluated based on the ecosystem health assessment (VOR model) from 1988 to 2021. The capacity of the life support system in cities is severely declining due to their physical growth and increased construction. This study showed that from 1988 to 2021, built-up areas in Tehran increased by 67.45%, while green and open areas decreased by 63.84% and 79.21%, respectively. Also, according to the results of this research, in most regions of Tehran, vigor, organization, elasticity, and ecosystem health have declined sharply during the period under review. Examining changes in ecosystem health classes shows that the very weak class increased from 1988 (9.38%) to 2021 (27.93%). The weak class increased from 1988 to 2021, from 29.38% to 51.14%, respectively. In contrast, the percentage of good and very good classes decreased to 0 in this period. The results showed that the mean EH in 1988 was 0.41, while in 2021, it was 0.22, and the coefficient of variation (CV) increased to 64.01 in 2021. Estimates and mapping in this study show that the Organization Index significantly affected the ecosystem health of Tehran, which shows the importance of the composition and configuration of the life support system in determining the urban ecosystem's health. In conclusion, the quantitative assessment of EH on the urban area scale provides a better understanding of the construction process and its ecological effects on urban environmental quality.
This investigation analyzes the current situation of urban community gardening in the Catalan metropolis Barcelona. Community gardens are places where people can produce food, motivate, learn or teach about nature and integrate themselves socially. The study is based on a quantitative survey method using questionnaires. For this purpose, 93 test persons in 15 different gardens were randomly selected and interviewed on their intentions, practices, and perspective connected with gardening. The collected data show that recreation and relaxation in the urban gardens are displacing the perception of self-sufficient food supply as the driving factor for people of lower social status in particular. Knowledge of horticulture spreads in these urban “green oases.” They are “laboratories” in which skills and abilities related to the environment are generated, distributed and applied in practice. The resulting neighborhood integration counteracts socio-urban exclusion. The gardeners can be divided into the groups of retirees and younger, ecologically sustainable people. This categorization is visible in many behavioral aspects related to urban gardening. In general, there is an urgent need to secure and extend the existing urban gardens because of numerous benefits for many urban dwellers.KeywordsCommunity gardensUrban gardeningBarcelonaGarden typologyRecreation
Unprecedented urban growth has placed increasing pressure on cities globally. The intensive land use changes that follow urban growth often result in the degradation of natural ecosystems, with adverse consequences for the wellbeing of urban populations as the potential delivery of ecosystem services diminishes. This thesis: 1) investigated the spatial distribution of urban ecosystem services in Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2) tested the utilisation of two off-the-shelf ecosystem service valuation tools (SolVES and InVEST) in supporting urban planning, and 3) investigated the extent to which urban ecosystem services and urban biodiversity have been considered as part of sustainable development planning in Kuala Lumpur. Chapter One outlines the aim and scope of the thesis and sets out the research questions addressed in subsequent chapters. It also introduces key concepts and tools used in this thesis. Chapter Two provides a systematic review on the nature and extent of urban ecosystem services research in Southeast Asia in the last two decades. The chapter showed that while urban ecosystem services research in the region has burgeoned over the last five years, research is unequally distributed across Southeast Asia. The chapter found that research often assessed regulating and cultural urban ecosystem services at a landscape scale, though research on synergistic and tradeoff interactions between services were limited. It showed that research was biased towards more developed cities and countries in the region, which may overlook less-developed nations as well as rural and peri-urban regions and their unique preferences towards urban ecosystem services management. The chapter discusses challenges and considerations for urban ecosystem services research in Southeast Asia, given the region’s unique and diverse socioeconomic characteristics, and outlines knowledge gaps addressed in subsequent chapters in this thesis. Chapter Three provides a novel assessment of the distribution of social values for ecosystem services across the Greater Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. A public participatory GIS survey and the SolVES tool were used to determine residents’ development preferences and perceptions of social values. The chapter reveals that the heterogenous spatial distribution of social values across urban and peri-urban areas was influenced by residents’ development preferences and sociodemographic characteristics. The non-spatial differences in residents’ characteristics and development preferences were found to manifest as larger differences in the spatial distribution of social values, leading to conflicts between groups with different development preferences. The work highlights locations where there is potential for land-use conflict with respect to future urban expansion, emphasising the need for further public engagement and the consideration of multiple perspectives in designing cities. Chapter Four presents a systematic method for integrating the outcomes of a multiple urban ecosystem services assessment to support green infrastructure development across urbanising landscapes. The chapter combines biophysical InVEST ecosystem service models with multicriteria suitability analysis to provide spatially explicit recommendations on targeted areas for five future green infrastructure strategies. The realised distribution of urban ecosystem services was high in seminatural areas and low in urban areas, highlighting the lack of green infrastructure in dense urban areas. The ecosystem services-based suitability analysis showed that some parts of the study area were suitable for the implementation of more than one type of green infrastructure strategy. The findings suggest that the selection of appropriate green infrastructure strategies must consider the varying degree of urban development in the study area and the implication of these strategies for local communities. Chapter Five investigates the extent to which ecosystem services and urban biodiversity were considered in sustainable urban development academic and policy literature in Malaysia. The literature review and content analysis indicated that academic literature and policy documents emphasised the aesthetic and cultural aspects of nature in urban design but rarely captured the full suite of ecosystem services found in cities. The chapter also identified several ecological knowledge gaps in academic literature and policy documents and calls for broader ecological perspectives in sustainable urban development research and policy initiatives. Recommendations are made for the adoption of stronger nature-based approaches through the incorporation of ecosystem services in urban planning. The chapter also highlights the need for critical assessments on the effectiveness of sustainable planning policies in the region, to ensure that sustainability initiatives are on track to meet their objectives. Chapter Six concludes this thesis by synthesising the contributions of the work and highlights challenges for future research in integrating urban ecosystem services to support planning of sustainable and resilient cities. The concept of urban ecosystem services investigated in this thesis will become increasingly important in planning sustainable cities globally, but more so in the Global South, where cities are growing rapidly and are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The research conducted in this thesis contributes to the limited and exigently needed body of urban ecosystem services knowledge in a tropical Global South city. The novel application of ecosystem service valuation tools and methods demonstrated in this thesis can be adapted for urban areas in Southeast Asia and other Global South regions to support the planning of resilient urban ecosystems.
This article traces the ideas of developing science with the assistance of crafts, crafts with the assistance of science, and their fulfilment in the Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded by Peter the Great on 28 January/8 February 1724 in St. Petersburg. This format met the needs of the time and Peter’s vision of the academy as a practical scientific institution where theoretical and practical science could coexist. The analysis of the interaction between science and the crafts shows that this combination was on the cutting edge of developments of the sciences and technology in Europe, reflecting a transition from theoretical to experimental science where knowledge was obtained by means of experience. In the long term, the help of a wide spectrum of sciences and high technology led to the achievement of
technological leadership. Craft departments in the St. Petersburg academy played an important role, where they produced well-made tools, high-precision devices, and various prototypes. The results of the research show that the characteristics of Russian cultural space (where there was no firm division between the arts and sciences), the problems of the times, and a lack of financial means required Peter
to complete various difficult tasks in the creation of a multifunctional institution, namely the academy. The article’s chronological framework covers the period from 1697 to 1724, beginning with the Great Embassy to Europe and Leibniz’s letters to the tsar with notes and plans about the organization of the academy and ending with the academy’s establishment.
Keywords: Peter I, St. Petersburg, Academy of Sciences, chambers of crafts, arts and sciences, scientists and artisans.
Citation: Gallay, I.; Olah, B.; Murtinová, V.; Gallayová, Z. Quantification of the Cooling Effect and Cooling Distance of Urban Green Spaces Based on Their Vegetation
Structure and Size as a Basis for Management Tools for Mitigating Urban Climate. Sustainability 2023, 15, 3705. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043705
Urban green areas are essential components of a city. They guarantee an adequate quality of life by providing several ecosystem services. Green areas must be designed and managed appropriately with a long-term approach ensuring a healthy urban ecosystem. It is possible to observe how especially in the USA and Canada there is a useful tool for this purpose, the Urban Forest Management Plan. The aim of this study is to understand which practical and effective plans were available for manage public urban green spaces in Europe, before COVID-19 (non-routine period), in order to carefully set up management plans. In order to reach the goal a bibliographic review was performed and reported following the PRISMA Statement. Furthermore, a research was carried out on the main management plans adopted by the municipalities in European capitals. In this regard, the research tries to investigate the knowledge base that European municipalities can use to set up an urban green management plan. The narration of the outcomes was designed as an initial guide aimed primarily at public administrators by providing them with a path and a scheme on how to structure a long-term green management plan in European cities. In the hope that even European municipalities can adopt a long-term green management plan, we propose a scheme to be followed to achieve this goal, with the indication of five essential points to be taken into account.
The concept of green infrastructure and its integration into policies using monitoring systems
Cities across the United States increasingly are debating the best way to use vacant “infill” lots. The community garden movement is one of the major contenders for the space, as are advocates for small public “pocket” parks and other green spaces. To allocate the land most efficiently and fairly, local governments need sound research about the value of such gardens and parks to their host communities. At the same time, cities are looking for new ways of financing the development and maintenance of public garden and park space. Some have turned to tax increment financing to generate resources, other are introducing impact fees or special assessments to cover the costs of urban parks. In order to employ such financing mechanisms, both policy concerns and legal constraints require local governments to base their charges on sound data about the impacts green spaces have on the value of the neighboring properties that would be forced to bear the incidence of the tax or fee. Despite the clear public policy need for such data, our knowledge about the impacts community gardens and other such spaces have on surrounding neighborhoods is quite limited. No studies have focused specifically on community gardens, and those that have examined the property value impacts of parks and other open space are cross-sectional studies inattentive to when the park opened, so that it is impossible to determine the direction of the causality of any property value differences found. The existing literature also has paid insufficient attention to qualitative differences among the parks studied and to differences in characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods that might affect the parks’ impacts. Applying hedonic methods to a unique data set of all property sales in New York City over several decades, we compared the prices of properties within a given distance of community gardens to prices of comparable properties outside the designated ring, but still located in the same neighborhood. By examining whether and how this difference changed once a community garden was established, we account for any systematic differences between the sites used for community gardens and other land in the neighborhood, thus resolving questions about the direction of causality and helping to disentangle the specific effects of community gardens from other contemporaneous changes occurring across neighborhoods and properties in the city. We find that the opening of a community garden has a statistically significant positive impact on residential properties within 1000 feet of the garden, and that the impact increases over time. We find that gardens have the greatest impact in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Higher quality gardens have the greatest positive impact. Finally, we find that the opening of a garden is associated with other changes in the neighborhood, such as increasing rates of homeownership, and thus may be serving as catalysts for economic redevelopment of the community.
Estimates of air pollution removal by the urban forest have mostly been based on mean values of forest structure variables for an entire city. However, the urban forest is not uniformly distributed across a city because of biophysical and social factors. Consequently, air pollution removal function by urban vegetation should vary because of this spatial heterogeneity. This paper presents a different approach to evaluate how the spatial heterogeneity of the urban forest influences air pollution removal at the socioeconomic subregion scale. estimated using measured urban forest structure data from three socioeconomic subregions in Santiago, Chile. Dry deposition was estimated using hourly climate, mixing height, and pollutant concentration data. Pollution removal rates among the three socioeconomic subregions were different because of heterogeneous urban forest structure and pollution concentrations. Air pollution removal per square meter of tree cover was greatest in the low socioeconomic subregion. Pollution removal during 1997–1998 was different from 2000 to 2001 due to pollution concentration differences. Seasonal air quality improvement also differed among the subregions. Results can be used to design management alternatives at finer administrative scales such as districts and neighborhoods that maximize the pollution removal rates by the urban forest in a subregion. Policies that affect the functionality of urban forest structure must consider spatial heterogeneity and scale when making region-wide recommendations. Similarly, when model-ing the functionality of the urban forest, models must capture this spatial heterogeneity for inter-city comparisons.