Content uploaded by Nicola Clerici
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Nicola Clerici on Oct 03, 2018
Content may be subject to copyright.
Urban ecosystem Services in Latin America: mismatch between global
concepts and regional realities?
Cynnamon Dobbs
1
&Francisco J. Escobedo
2
&Nicola Clerici
2
&Francisco de la Barrera
3
&Ana Alice Eleuterio
4
&
Ian MacGregor-Fors
5
&Sonia Reyes-Paecke
6
&Alexis Vásquez
7
&Jorge Danilo Zea Camaño
8
&H. Jaime Hernández
9
#Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most urbanized and biologically diverse regions in the world
but is often characterized by weak environmental governance and socioeconomic inequalities. Given large expanses
of intact biomes, a long history of pre-Colombian civilizations, and recent urbanization trends, the urban ecosystem
services (UES) concept has the potential to address issues of well-being for its citizens. We review relevant regional
and global literature and use expert-based knowledge to identify the state of the art of the UES concept as
applicable to green spaces in LAC and elucidate three overarching guidelines for management and future research
needs: 1. LAC cities can be socio-ecologically unique; 2. Drivers of UES in LAC can be different than in other
regions; and 3. Context and demand need to be accounted for when valuing UES. Overall, we show that research on
UES is mostly from the global north and rarely accounts for the diverse and complex socio-political and ecological
drivers of LAC’s urbanization processes. We find that, as in other regions, the biophysical context and land use
policies play a major role on UES provision. However, socioeconomic inequalities and weak governance are key
drivers in UES supply and demand in LAC. Context-specific information on how to promote, educate, and apply
UES is particularly important, not only in LAC, but in other regions where inequities, rapid urbanization, and
climate change effects are stressing socio-political and ecological systems and their adaptive capacities.
Standardized approaches from developed countries should be used to complement - not substitute –LAC context
specific approaches for studying and applying UES. We suggest that improved research funding and local gover-
nance can also provide critical strategies, information and the means for more effective management, planning, and
equitable provision of UES.
Keywords Green infrastructure .Socio-ecological systems .Urban ecology .Governance .Social inequities
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0805-3) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
*Cynnamon Dobbs
cdobbsbr@gmail.com
Francisco J. Escobedo
franciscoj.escobedo@urosario.edu.co
Nicola Clerici
nicola.clerici@urosario.edu.co
FranciscodelaBarrera
fdelabarrera@udec.cl
Ana Alice Eleuterio
ana.eleuterio@unila.edu.br
Ian MacGregor-Fors
macgregor.ian@gmail.com
Sonia Reyes-Paecke
sreyespa@uc.cl
Alexis Vásquez
alexvasq@u.uchile.cl
Jorge Danilo Zea Camaño
jdzeaca@gmail.com
H. Jaime Hernández
jhernand@uchile.cl
Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Urban Ecosystems
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0805-3
Introduction
With an average of 80% of its inhabitants living in urban
areas, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the
world’s most urbanized regions. Fifty cities have more than
one million inhabitants and four have over ten million inhab-
itants (United Nations 2014). Rapid urbanization and
sprawling cities are affecting not only ecosystem structure
and land use change, but the provision of multiple ecosystem
functions and subsequent services and goods such as water
quality and availability, fiber and food production, and
socio-cultural experiences (Altieri et al. 1999; Myers et al.
2000; MacGregor-Fors et al. 2016). At a similar rate to other
tropical and subtropical regions, urban ecosystems in LAC are
also experiencing biodiversity loss within and beyond their
physical limits, with consequences to the well-being of their
citizens (Tratalos et al. 2007; Grimm et al. 2008).
Understanding this process and its effects is important as
LAC is recognized as a region with great biological diversity,
intact biomes, and many prioritized conservation hotspots
(Myers et al. 2000). The region contains nearly half of the
world’s tropical forests and nearly 40% of its renewable water
resources (United Nations 2010). Latitudinal and elevation
gradients have resulted in a diverse array of biomes such as
tropical, temperate, desert, high mountain, Mediterranean, and
mangrove, among others (Eva et al. 2004). Growing popula-
tions and economic development are driving land use change
(Inostroza et al. 2013) to the extent that urban and agricultural
systems are rapidly altering the structure and function of eco-
systems with high biodiversity and ecological integrity
(Tratalos et al. 2007).
The concept of ecosystem services has its origin and is well
established in a few high-income countries in Europe and
North America (Costanza et al. 1997; De Groot et al. 2012).
In 2005, the United Nation’s Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (MEA 2005) provided researchers and decision-
makers across the world with an ecosystem service framework
and approach for quantifying and assessing changes in eco-
systems and their processes and influences on human well-
being.Basedonthisframework,anincreasingbodyoflitera-
ture on services and goods from a variety of ecosystems across
the globe, including urban ecosystems, is being published.
Similarly, the 2015 United Nation’s Sustainable
Development Goals (United Nations 2015), particularly goal
11: “sustainable cities and communities”, calls for enhancing
sustainable urbanization, reducing the environmental impact,
such as air pollution, in cities, and providing more accessible
and inclusive green spaces. These initiatives have been ac-
companied by The Economics of Ecosystem Services and
Biodiversity (TEEB 2011), which linked the economics of
ecosystem services with biodiversity, and by the
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services, which related scientific information
to policy making (Perrings et al. 2011). Despite the advances
made, further information about UES and how to apply the
concept outside of the high-income countries from which it
was developed is needed to address pressing social, environ-
mental, and economic problems that are relevant to LAC.
Suchinformationshouldbeparticularlyusefultourbaniz-
ing middle- and low-income countries. For example, the ur-
banization process in LAC is highly dynamic due to complex
geo-political and historical drivers, weak governance and
planning institutions, rapid population growth, dynamic
socio-political transitions, emigration to cities, poverty, real
estate markets, and marked socioeconomic inequities
(Roberts 2005; United Nations 2014). Such is often not the
reality of many high-income regions from where these UES
concepts originated. Indeed, most seminal studies are based
on cities of the developed world, particularly those from
northern and western Europe, North America and eastern
Asia (Tratalos et al. 2007; Haase et al. 2014). Thus, the role
of urban ecosystem services (UES) has been little studied and
global literature on the topic rarely accounts for the social,
economic, and environmental context of the LAC region
(Roy et al. 2012; Haase et al. 2014). Given LAC’slonghis-
torical legacy dating from the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan cul-
tures to more modern urbanistic trends and its many diverse,
often intact biomes; this region can contribute to the current
discourse on UES with unique lessons and experiences
(Isendahl and Smith 2013).
To address this lack of information, below we review, an-
alyze, and discuss the relevant literature related to UES and its
relevance in LAC, and in doing so we aim to better understand
and assess the application of the concept given the realities of
the region. Specifically, as our first objective, we reviewed the
international literature to identify the state of the art regarding
UES across the globe. Second, we identify and assess selected
regional literature from LAC on UES using expert-based
knowledge todiscuss and analyze the relevance ofUES given
the realities of LAC’s context. Finally, we draw upon this
knowledge to discuss three overarching guidelines and pro-
pose future research needs related to management, planning,
and the equitable provision of UESs in LAC.
Methods
We reviewed the international and LAC literature by
searching the Web of Science and Science Electronic
Library Online (SciELO) for English, Spanish, and
Portuguese language articles, reviews, and book chapters. To
better compare our LAC identified literature to other regions,
we used search terms reported in recent literature reviews on
urban ecosystem services (Roy et al. 2012; Haase et al. 2014;
Luederitz et al. 2015). Specifically, in a first search we looked
for records that contained “urban”and “ecosystem services”,
Urban Ecosyst
in combination with their country’sname(e.g.“urban”and
“ecosystem service”and “Mexico”) in the title, abstract and/or
keywords. We also searched for “urban parks”AND/OR “ur-
ban forests”AND/OR “green infrastructure”,incombination
with their country’s name. In a second step we searched for the
same terms and refined the search by country’s name, using
the tool provided by the Web of Science.
Once the initial review was finalized, a multi-disciplinary
regional working group representing experts from several of
LAC’s most urbanized countries assessed and filtered out non-
relevant publications and selected the most UES relevant in-
ternational literature from their respective LAC countries.
This group of experts coincides with the authors of this man-
uscript. This relevant literature was identified using the publi-
cation’s title and/or abstract content, resulting in a set of pub-
lications that we will use as the basis for analysis and discus-
sion. The filtering ensured that the research was from a Latin
American city and that it actually referred to an ecosystem
service (i.e. was not just a tree inventory). The search was
carried out during June 2017.
This approach identified the major concepts that were
gleaned from a set of relevant global and regional UES liter-
ature. Key criteria in their assessment of relevance and appli-
cation in LAC was that the publication accounted for the re-
gion’s unique ecological, social, and environmental context.
For example, terms such as “urban forest benefits”and “urban
park and property values”from specific countries not
matching the exact search string, were included by individual
country experts in our final list as their content did meet our
objectives. Finally, in our discussion, we focus our analysis of
the literature relevant to the three guidelines. We then eluci-
date areas of future research needs and directions in the broad
areas of urban and political ecology, policy, socioeconomic
valuation, and land management and planning that are directly
related to UES in LAC.
Results
UES in the literature
Like other reviews focused on UES (Haase et al. 2014;
Luederitz et al. 2015), ours revealed an increasing number of
relevant publications related to the search string “Urban”and
“Ecosystem Services”, which increased from 4 in 2000 to 462
publications in 2016. We note that at the time of writing,
halfway through 2017, there were already 220 relevant publi-
cations, included in the Web of Science and SciELO. This
search revealed a total of 1963 publication, of which 37%
are from the United States, 13% from China, 10% from the
United Kingdom and 9% from Germany; proportion similar to
those reported by Luederitz et al. (2015). As for LAC region,
after filtering out, we identified only 107 (originally 142 from
LAC countries), or 5% of all publications, indicating a notice-
able dearth of region-specific literature on this topic. When
including other terms in our reviews such as “urban forests”,
“urban parks”and “green infrastructure”, and specific coun-
tries in LAC, the number of LAC relevant publications in-
creased to 408, but the inclusion of these terms does little to
change LAC position as far as number of relevant publications
against other global regions (Fig. 1). Our results showed an
increasing number of relevant publications related to UES in
LAC, specifically from 2 in year 2001 to 70 in year 2016.
Overall, our review of the global literature shows that the
US and Canada have a considerably greater number of publi-
cations on “urban forests”than all other regions. Indeed, the
sum of all 22 LAC countries’publications place it fifth (125),
well after Asia - primarily China - and after Australia and New
Zealand. We found a wide range of disciplines publishing on
urban ecosystem services, but the main ones were the envi-
ronmental sciences, ecology, urban studies, and geography. In
LAC, the environmental sciences and ecology are the main
disciplines of research. However, disciplines such as biodiver-
sity conservation and forestry are of greater importance than in
other regions.
UES literature from LAC
A more LAC focused review of the relevant literature found
that only five of the 22 LAC countries had more than 10
publications on “urban ecosystem services”(Fig. 2), while
only 3 countries had more than 10 for “urban parks”, 2 coun-
tries for “urban forests”and all the LAC countries had fewer
than 10 publications for “green infrastructure”.Thislackof
scientific publications is not trivial, as it shows a pressing need
for information and knowledge on LAC’s diverse and com-
plex contexts: biomes (e.g., climatic zone, local vegetation
and soils, urban morphology), governance and values (e.g.
institutional capacity, culturally held and assigned values),
and scale of supplied service (e.g., tree shade for individual
landowners or water regulation at the watershed scale); these
factors are rarely addressed in the literature (Andersson et al.
2007;Escobedoetal.2011). Most importantly, by relying on
information and knowledge gatheredfrom available studies in
disparate temperate developed regions like the United States
or Europe, there is a risk of making socially, environmentally,
and economically mismatched decisions that are not contex-
tually or scale relevant to LAC’srealities.
We also found that publications frequently deal with issues
related to ecosystem services in relation to biodiversity con-
servation (34%) and the quantification of regulating services
(22%), and a large proportion addressed ecosystem services
related to forests or water (43%). However, less than 5% of
studies addressed cultural or provisioning services and only 6
papers included LAC in global studies. Seeour supplementary
material for a list of the relevant literature we identified.
Urban Ecosyst
Discussion
In comparison to literature from the Global North, fewer rel-
evant publications from LAC could be used to quantitatively
analyze and identify regional trends and metrics than those
typically reported in other English Language international re-
views on UES (Haase et al. 2014; Luederitz et al. 2015;Roy
et al. 2012; Von Döhren and Haase 2015). Therefore, given
Fig. 2 Number of publications in
the Web of Science (WoS) and
SciELO relating to “Urban
Ecosystem Services (UES),
Urban parks, Urban Forests and
Green Infrastructure”in Latin
America and the Caribbean
(LAC)
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Africa
Lan America and the Caribbean
Australia and New Zealand
Asia
Europe
USA and Canada
Number of Publicaons
Urban + ES Urban parks Urban forests Green Infrastructure
Fig. 1 Number of publications in
the Web of Science (WoS) and
SciELO related to Urban
Ecosystem Services (UES)
(June 2017)
Urban Ecosyst
this limitation, we used this finite number of available litera-
ture (in English, Spanish and Portuguese) and our expert
knowledge to both assess the international state of the art of
the UES concept and its regional application given LAC’s
socio-ecological and economic context. To do so, we centered
our discussion on three overarching guidelines: 1. LAC cities
can be socio-ecologically unique; 2. Drivers of UES in LAC
can be different than in other regions; and 3. Context and
demand need to be accounted for when valuing UES. Then,
for our Conclusion we synthesized our review and assessment
to elucidate areas of future research needs related to UES
management and planning in LAC.
Ecosystem services in the global urban
context
We found a wealth of publications documenting the potential
of urban green spaces to contribute to human quality of life
through infrastructure, access to education, and health and
labor opportunities, and this has been well established in both
international and LAC regional literature (see supplementary
section). But, a significant body of the UES literature focuses
on their supply, which is often referred to as benefits derived
from intermediate ecological functions and processes that di-
rectly or indirectly contribute to human well-being (Dobbs
et al. 2011). By contrast ecosystem disservices, as presented
in the international literature, are those ecosystem functions
that detrimentally affect human well-being (e.g., allergies, nui-
sance wildlife, vector habitat; Escobedo et al. 2011;Von
Döhren and Haase 2015). Based on these previous studies,
we integrated these slightly varying definitions. For our pur-
poses we defined UES as the ecological processes, functions,
and products from both natural and semi-natural and/or man-
aged ecosystems in urban and peri-urban areas that contribute
to human wellbeing. By semi-natural ecosystems, we refer to
those that are human maintained and those in, or near, human
settlements that have moderate to highly disturbed ecosystem
structure and functional attributes.
Accordingly, we referred to natural and semi-natural urban
green spaces (i.e., green infrastructure, urban parks and ur-
ban forests) as the nature-based attributes existing in cities that
are, or have been, subjected to anthropogenic management
and disturbance. These attributes include trees and other veg-
etation in streetscapes, forests, parks, gardens, conservation
areas, wetlands, streams, rivers and riparian zones, or estuaries
within or adjacent to urban agglomerations. Their structural
attributes also include pervious soils and planted, remnant, or
ruderal vegetation and the associated fauna whose ecosystem
functions provide for socially, economically, and environmen-
tally beneficial services (Dobbs et al. 2014; Escobedo et al.
2011; MacGregor-Fors et al. 2016; Roy et al. 2012).
The international literature we reviewed refers to regulating
UES as those that sustain processes that are key for the medi-
ation of waste, flow of material and energy, and the mainte-
nance of physical, chemical and biological conditions, includ-
ing flood regulation, pollution removal and temperature ame-
lioration (González-Oreja et al. 2010; Dobbs et al. 2011;Cui
and De Foy 2012; Roy et al. 2012). Provisioning UES mean-
while influence the supply of food, fiber, and drinking water,
and are key for building materials and for human nutrition
(Altieri et al. 1999; Russo et al. 2017a). Cultural UES are the
result of physical and intellectual, spiritual and symbolic inter-
actions with ecosystem functions that provide for human rec-
reation, education, religious, and aesthetic amenities, including
increased property premiums that benefit human cognition and
sense of place (De Groot et al. 2012;Henrique2006). Finally,
Supporting and Habitat UES are the ones that allow for other
ecosystem services to exist although they are generally applied
to non-urban ecosystems with a high degree of ecological in-
tegrity (Escobedo et al. 2011; Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment 2005). We noted that other metaphors are increas-
ingly being used that are very similar to UES and green infra-
structure and include nature-based solutions, natural capital,
and blue infrastructure (Hasse 2015;FAO2016;Kabisch
et al. 2016;Sarukhán and Jiménez 2016; Faggi and Caula
2017; Russo et al. 2017b; Willis and Petrokofsky 2017).
After having defined key concepts based on the global
literature related to UES, in the following section we discuss
three overarching guidelines that we gleaned from our review
that the expert group felt should be considered when applying
the UES concept in LAC. First, we discuss if indeed LAC
cites are socio-ecologically unique relative to the high-
income countries of Europe and North America. We discuss
if the diverse and complex socio-ecological conditions in
LAC cities affect the structure and function of urban green
spaces differently than in Europe or North America. Second,
we identify drivers of provision and dynamics of commonly
studied UES in LAC and discussed if they are different from
other developed regions. Finally, we discuss and argue for the
need to account for both context and demand when valuing
UES in LAC.
LAC cities can be socio-ecologically unique
Like other world regions with low and middle-income coun-
tries (e.g. Africa and south Asia), several urban socio-
ecological factors such as rapid population growth, rural to
urban migration, socioeconomic inequity, and ecological leg-
acy characterize human settlements of Meso and South
America (Isendahl and Smith 2013). But, the increased num-
ber of biodiversity hotspots makes LAC different from Europe
and US-Canada. Generally, modern cities in LAC are charac-
terized by higher population density than European and North
American cities, and have a high proportion of their urban area
Urban Ecosyst
occupied by public housing and informal settlements, imper-
vious surfaces, and high building density, often resulting in
low urban vegetation cover and fragmented patches of green
spaces (United Nations 2010). However, cities across the
LAC region also exhibit marked socioeconomic inequalities
that influence access to public services such as sanitation and
transportation (Borsdorf and Hidalgo 2010;Pauchardand
Barbosa 2013). This latter reality is key in our discussion
and will be discussed in the following sections.
Several international studies documented that the distribu-
tion, quantity and quality of urban green spaces are often
proxies for the residents’socioeconomic status (Pedlowski
et al. 2002; De la Barrera et al. 2016; Wright et al. 2012;
Scopellit et al. 2016). Generally, higher income neighbor-
hoods have a greater quantity and better quality of public
green spaces, private parks, and residential gardens in larger
lots. Conversely, the poorest neighborhoods have varying
building densities, poor infrastructure, low quantity and qual-
ity of green spaces, small residential gardens, and sparse veg-
etation cover in smaller lots (Fig. 3; Pedlowski et al. 2002,
Reyes-Paecke and Figueroa 2010, Reyes-Paecke and Meza
2011, Wright et al. 2012, Scopellit et al. 2016). The middle-
class residential areas are generally diverse in terms of vege-
tation, which is mostly limited to green spaces and residential
gardens (De la Barrera et al. 2016). Further, since the late
1980s, the relative proportion of urban growth in LAC has
occurred mostly in medium-sized cities which in recent de-
cades have increased rapidly throughout the region, replicat-
ing the segregated urbanization pattern of large metropolitan
areas (Borsdorf and Hidalgo 2010). Such factors have been
reported to lead to a significant loss in green spaces, especially
remnant natural ecosystems, as well as adjacent rural areas
(Aguayo et al. 2007; Pauchard and Barbosa 2013).
The relevant literature we assessed showed that socio-
political and economic contexts affect the structure and func-
tion of urban green spaces and their UES (Escobedo and
Chacalo 2008; Benitez et al. 2012; Biggs et al. 2015;
Escobedo et al. 2015; De la Barrera et al. 2016; Favaro et al.
2016; Dobbs et al. 2017). Specifically: (1) supply, level, and
interactions among UES; (2) demand for UES by different
social groups; and (3) actions of different social groups and
their power relations and asymmetries determine the decision-
making processes that drive social inequities relating to the
latter points. For example, access to urban green spaces and
their UES are often stratified based on income (Romero et al.
2012; Scopellit et al. 2016). Research on the relationship be-
tween urban green spaces structure and UES provision, re-
garding their socioeconomic status, has often focused on the
analysis of green space distribution and on certain associated
biophysical characteristics (Pedlowski et al. 2002; Reyes-
Fig. 3 Low income (upper 2
photos) and high income (lower 2
photos) neighborhoods and
streets in Bogotá Colombia using
Google Earth and Streetview®.
Note irregular land use patterns,
poor condition infrastructure, and
low, fragmented green space
cover in upper two photos. Aerial
images taken at an altitude of
3.2 km and street views are from
September 2012
Urban Ecosyst
Paecke and Figueroa 2010; Celemin et al. 2013). Thus, like in
developed countries- socioeconomic status- regardless of cli-
mate, is the predominant driver of urban green space distribu-
tion, access and connectivity in LAC (Romero et al. 2012;
Escobedo et al. 2015).
However, the socioeconomic inequity that characterizes
most LAC countries tends to weigh more heavily in the supply
anddemandforUESthaninmanyotherglobalregions
(Lustig et al. 2015). This reality is starkly different from other
regions (E.g. Northern Europe, Australia) where effective
public institutions and governance can maximize the provi-
sion of UES via well-established land use and conservation
policies (Balvanera et al. 2012) which differ greatly from
LAC’s ineffective public policies and issues of poor transpar-
ency that can limit the influence of UES on well-being (De
Freitas et al. 2007, Romero-Lankao 2007; Hardoy and
Pandiella 2009; Perez-Campuzano et al. 2016;DaSilva
et al. 2017; Gonzalez and Ojeda-Revah 2017).
Several other regional studies indicated that historical and
current regional and local-level planning and governance are
key factors determining the amount and distribution of urban
green spaces (Colding et al. 2006,Henrique2006,Andersson
et al. 2007, Perez-Campuzano et al. 2016, Gonzalez and
Ojeda-Revah 2017). Neoliberal policies implemented in the
1980s across LAC have limited progressive governmental ur-
ban planning decisions (Roberts 2005). This has led to the
development of ineffective regulatory planning instruments
and increased influence of the private sector through real
estate-oriented interests (Henrique 2006). Planning and gov-
ernance are generally characterized by ineffective governmen-
tal institutions, lack of transparency, poorly defined ten-
ure regimes, absence or ineffectiveness of planning
tools, and prioritization of investments in built infra-
structure and hard technologies at the cost of urban
green spaces (Santos et al. 2010,Escobedoetal.
2015, Calderón-Contreras and Quiroz-Rosas 2017).
We also found that, because management of urban green
spaces such as parks and plazas usually depends on municipal
revenues and homeowner access to resources, urban munici-
palities and neighborhoods with lower income generally have
few, sparsely vegetated urban green spaces (Pedlowski et al.
2002;Escobedoetal.2015; Favaro et al. 2016), and subse-
quently lower UES provision. In addition, the occupation of
ecologically sensitive peri-urban areas by informal, poorly
planned settlements and slums detrimentally affects urban
green space structure and function (Benitez et al. 2012;
Inostroza et al. 2013; Biggs et al. 2015;Escobedoetal.
2015). For example, unplanned settlements in Bogota,
Colombia, for example, are a result of people being forced
to relocate due to military conflicts in rural areas or criminal
activity (De Geoffroy 2009).
These unplanned urbanization patterns common in many
LAC cities affect local and regional biodiversity by promoting
local extinctions and introducing alien species. Regional and
global studies show how changes in species pool (e.g. inva-
sive species) can potentially alter ecosystem processes that
determine the provision of UES (Lima et al. 2013;
MacGregor-Fors et al. 2016). In LAC, urbanization has been
documentedto have greater impacts than in other regions, due
to its high biodiversity and degree of endemism (Ditt et al.
2010; Myers et al., 2000; Mendoza-González et al. 2012,
Flores-Meza et al. 2013, Merlín-Uribe et al. 2013, Mitsch
and Hernandez 2013, Pougy et al. 2014, Salazar et al. 2015,
Scarano and Ceotto 2015). Urban ecosystems in LAC, as
elsewhere, are now frequently characterized for having many
introduced and often-invasive flora, which are preferred over
native species despite their influence in UES provision (Lima
et al. 2013; Caballero-Serrano et al. 2016). For example, some
fauna adapted to urban conditions can play important roles as
pollinators, seed dispersers and pest regulators (Aleixo et al.
2014; MacGregor-Fors et al. 2016). Large numbers of intro-
duced species are common in cities of Colombia, Brazil,
Chile, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and Argentina (Isernhagen
et al. 2009;Santosetal.2010; Gutiérrez et al. 2013;Lima
et al. 2013; Angonese and Grau 2014;Escobedoetal.2015).
Drivers of UES can be different than in other regions
Global and some regional studies on the supply of UES have
emphasized a few regulating UES, namely carbon sequestra-
tion and water quality (Fernández et al.,2010; Balvanera et al.
2012, Mazari-Hiriart et al. 2014, Vargas-González et al., 2014;
Luederitz et al. 2015; Clerici et al. 2016; Cunha et al. 2016,
Jujnovsky et al. 2017), and to a lesser degree, health, recrea-
tion, and aesthetic benefits related to cultural services
(Escobedo and Chacalo 2008; Reyes-Paecke and Figueroa
2010; Ribeiro and Ribeiro 2016). Given the dynamic charac-
ter of LAC cities, climate change mitigation, as opposed to
adaptation, has become a more common approach for address-
ing regulating ecosystem services mainly related to cli-
mate change and air quality (Magrin et al. 2007;
Escobedo et al. 2008; Escobedo and Chacalo 2008;
Baumgardner et al. 2012; Dos Santos et al. 2014;
Pimienta-Barrios et al. 2014; Sacchi et al. 2017).
As in other regions, the literature also shows a second set of
biophysical and morphological factors driving urban green
spaces (Benitez et al. 2012; Dobbs et al. 2014; Biggs et al.
2015;Favaroetal.2016). Many cities in LAC are distributed
in the extremes of temperature, rainfall, and evapotranspira-
tion rates (i.e., Amazonian tropical lowlands to Mexican high
elevation deserts) which influence primary productivity and
ecosystem structure differently than most developed cities lo-
cated in cool, temperate climates. This in turn determines the
supply and demand of UES, such as climate mitigation and
recreation (Dobbs et al. 2014). Steep topography in the moun-
tainous Andean region, for example, influences specific
Urban Ecosyst
regulatingUES related to the mitigation of natural hazards like
flooding and landslides which often affect the peri-urban poor
(Aide and Grau 2004; Pisanty et al. 2009). Also, most urban
expansion in LAC occurs towards floodplains and lower
mountain slopes, which are frequently occupied by low-
income groups following unplanned growth (Hardoy and
Pandiella 2009; Benitez et al. 2012; Biggs et al. 2015). The
establishment of informal settlements can often cause vegeta-
tion clearing in slopes and riverbeds, thus increasing vulnera-
bility to natural disasters, a particularly frequent problem in
LAC cities (Cilento 2002; Benitez et al. 2012). Climate
change will also affect LAC cities and its substantial vulnera-
ble populations (Cilento 2002; Aide and Grau 2004;Magrin
et al. 2007; Hardoy and Pandiella 2009; Coronel et al. 2015;
Favaro et al. 2016) and the structure of urban green spaces in
LAC (e.g. tropical and arid cities will regularly experience
severe drought and even wildfire, while coastal cities will
experience sea level rise; Magrin et al. 2007).
Accordingly, we posit that mismatches between frequently
studied UES provision and actual consumer demand in LAC
can be due to the lack of planning, connectivity, and other
factors such as spatial and educational segregation, high levels
of inequity, and low community participation in urban
decision-making and public affairs (Romero et al. 2012). For
example, the emphasis on mitigating atmospheric pollutants
research (Escobedo and Chacalo 2008), has overlooked many
other pressing UES occurring in LAC such as regulating ur-
ban flooding, temperatures, food security, and access to sus-
tainable supplies of clean water (Aide and Grau 2004;
Romero-Lankao 2007;Crametal.2008; González-Oreja
et al. 2010; Cui and De Foy 2012; Barbedo et al. 2014;
Mazari-Hiriart et al. 2014; Pina and Martínez 2014).
Although an increasing body of literature on soil-related
UES has been developed in regard to fertility and disaster
prevention (Cram et al. 2008; Fernández et al. 2010), other
functions and services such as pest regulation, pollination,
bioenergy, and food provision continue to receive little
attention (Altieri et al. 1999; Chaves et al. 2011;De
Medeiros et al. 2013; Aleixo et al. 2014;Dickieetal.
2014;Russoetal.2017a).
Research in LAC has however started to incorporate UES
such as provision of medicinal resources as part of the value of
conserving biodiversity (De Medeiros et al. 2013;Aleixoetal.
2014). Cultural UES in LAC such as recreation and aesthetics
are also increasingly being studied (Reyes-Paecke and
Figueroa 2010; De Souza Filho et al. 2014; Ribeiro and
Ribeiro 2016; Scopellit et al. 2016;DelaBarreraetal.
2016b; González and Holtmann-Ahumada 2017). These stud-
ies show that local governments rarely invest in urban ecosys-
tem restoration that is required for such UES (Pisanty et al.
2009), with few exceptions in Mexico (Mendoza-Hernandez
et al. 2013; Mazari-Hiriart et al. 2014; Williams-Linera et al.
2015). This is likely because governmental resources often
prioritize basic and necessary social and economic programs,
such as access to housing, health and sanitation, while
investing in green spaces and UES provision is considered
less important (Nickson 2001).
Some of the regional literature we identified shows that
efforts are being made in a few LAC cities to recover urban
green spaces through large-scale restoration and tree planting
programs that include the increased use of native flora and
fauna to maximize ecosystem services and restoration goals
(Pimienta-Barrios et al. 2014). Urban wetland restoration pro-
grams and strategies in LAC have been implemented to re-
cover spaces for biodiversity and/or UES such as flood regu-
lation, water filtering, air pollution removal, habitat conserva-
tion, and education (Table 1). Medium and large cities (i.e.,
Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) have established parks of
remnant native patches of the Atlantic forest that not only
provide biodiversity but other regulating, supporting, and cul-
tural UES (Santos et al. 2010). More examples and quantifi-
able benefits from such projects are needed to inform and
promote UES benefits.
Context and demand need to be accounted for when
valuing UES
We were able to glean from the global UES literature that in
addition to the socio-ecological and political drivers discussed
above, land and real estate values and short term financial
profits to a limited number of agents, will generally outweigh
the use and non-use valuesto society of UES. Thedemand for
such UES is usually quantified using neoclassical economic
methods (e.g. hedonic valuation, contingent valuation, travel
cost, and avoided and replacement costs), sociology, and other
qualitative methods that measure people’s perception of UES.
Gómez-Baggethun and Barton (2013) and Kronenberg (2014)
provide a comprehensive list of these valuation methods,
along with their practices and limitations. This limited number
of studies seems to show that a combination or integration of
social as well as economic valuation methods are necessary,
given the complex and heterogeneous nature of UES.
Regionally, we found that most current LAC literature on
UES valuation is related to payment for ecosystem service
instruments like water quality and biodiversity conservation
(e.g. Brazil and Mexico; Larqué-Saavedra et al. 2004,
Machado et al. 2014, Jardim and Bursztyn 2015, Cunha
et al. 2016, Figueroa et al. 2016). Cultural UES and urban
ecosystem benefits such as heritage, pollution removal, car-
bon sequestration, aesthetics, and others, can also be found
from the Andean region, Brazil, and Mexico (Tognella-de-
Rosa et al. 2006;DelAngel-Perezetal.2011; Báez-
Montenegro et al. 2012;Ponce-Donosoetal.2012;Ordóñez
and Duinker 2014; Caro-Borrero et al. 2015). Many other
studies estimate Willingness to Pay (WTP) for services using
contingent valuation and benefit transfer methods based on
Urban Ecosyst
previous studies and shadow prices from North America and
Europe (Balvanera et al. 2012; Casey et al. 2006). But, as is
well known, possible mismatches are created when applying
these metrics for valuing demand in LAC, considering the
region’s diverse flora, fauna, cultures, wide range of climates
and geography, weak institutions and transparency, and other
socioeconomic inequities discussed in previous sections.
Thus, valuing UES per se comes with several challenges:
weak substitution, perception of corruption in WTP contin-
gencies, socio-ecological heterogeneity, connectivity/
infrastructure value, and scale issues (Gómez-Baggethun and
Barton 2013), in addition to the risk of applying utilitarian
monetary values to UES (Kronenberg 2014). In LAC, these
same issues affect valuation, but the lack of region-specific
information and methods may result in different and
sometimes erroneous outcomes.
For example, Ordóñez and Duinker (2014)discuss
Columbians’perceptions of cultural UES and associated
values, and found that increased property values from urban
forests were not necessarily highly valued. This might be a
result of the frequent occurrence of informal economic activ-
ities near treed spaces (e.g. street vendors, intermixed com-
mercial/residential/recreation activities), complex property
rights, and high population densities; and hence, a greater
number of potential beneficiaries from these services. A sim-
ilar study in Mexico (Camacho-Cervantes et al. 2014)re-
vealed that people value trees for the oxygen provision and
shade that might be related to the air quality of the city and
summer temperatures, despite biogenic emission from certain
trees that can contribute to increased ozone concentrations
(Baumgardner et al. 2012).
Thus, urban ecosystems can pose both positive (UES) and
negative (disservices) externalities to different beneficiaries
within the same locale. Socio-political (e.g. education, access
to resources, crime) and geographic context also affect the
value that different societies –and individuals- place on a
specific UES, even within the same region. For instance, in
arid Chile, Peru and Mexico, urban trees are valued for their
shading and air quality improvement benefits, but their evapo-
transpiration and pollination functions of certain species can
be considered disservices in these water-scarce environments
and for allergy prone populations. Thus, this differentiation
between service and disservices is both value-laden
and context-specific (Escobedo et al. 2011;von
Döhren and Haase 2015). These few relevant LAC stud-
ies account for local scale, context-specific socio-politi-
cal perceptions and values towards UES, and indicate
that increased environmental education, awareness, and
promotion are key when managing and planning for the
provision of services and minimization of disservices, in
LAC and elsewhere.
Similarly, limited regional literature indicates that in
most LAC megacities (e.g., Mexico City, São Paulo,
Lima, Bogota, Buenos Aires), urban development infra-
structure projects such as housing development, water
treatment plants, and engineered storm-water structures,
are regularly deemed to yield higher economic benefits
than does preserving green spaces and their UES due to
the opportunity costs of land (Aguayo et al. 2007;Cram
et al. 2008). Interestingly, as in other regions, much of the
engineered infrastructure related to urban development is
often to minimize the environmental hazards and socio-
ecological impacts brought about by the alteration of
green space function via built infrastructures (e.g. in-
creased floods, temperatures, quality of life; Von Döhren
and Haase 2015). Hence, region-specific socio-political
valuation information and methods that also prioritize sus-
tainability and equity are direly needed. We are awared
that in the time during the review-acceptance process of
the manuscript, new studies from LAC are beginning to
address issues such as urban ecosystem disservices,
spatio-temporal intercity comparisons of UES, and the
social value of provisioning UES among others
(Almeida et al. 2018; Banzhaf et al. 2018;DeMola
et al. 2018; Dobbs et al. 2018; Escobedo et al. 2018;
Moser et al. 2018; Nadal et al. 2018).
Table 1 Urban tree planting and
wetland restoration project
examples from Latin America and
the Caribbean
Tree plantings Web source
Belo Horizonte
(Brazil)
http://www.cemig.com.br/sites/imprensa/pt-br/Documents/Manual_Arborizacao_
Cemig_Biodiversitas.pdf
Santiago (Chile) www.arborizacion.cl;
Quito (Ecuador) http://comafors.org/programas-y-proyectos/forestal-y-agroforestal/
proyecto-planta-un-arbol-por-tu-futuro
Wetland restoration
Bogota
(Colombia)
http://humedalesbogota.com/humedales-bogota/
Belo Horizonte
(Brazil)
http://www.solucoesparacidades.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AF_
DRENNURBS_WEB.pdf
Santiago (Chile) http://www.forecos.cl/index.php/proyectos
Urban Ecosyst
Conclusion
Overall the UES concept’s origin, development, and sheer
number of publications are from the US-Canada, Europe and
more recently, China and Australia. As such the development,
policy uptake, and institutionalization of the UES as a research
framework and governance instrument in the European
Union, Canada, and the US has been well defined and accept-
ed. Although ecosystem service related concepts and practices
such as payments for ecosystem services and benefits from
urban green spaces are commonly mentioned in LAC urban
planning instruments, noticeably lacking are scientific UES
publications from LAC and other middle and low income
countries in Asia and Africa that can provide the science-
based information needed for more effective policy uptake.
Although we did identify similarities and dissimilarities in
relation to how UES are defined, used, applied, and institu-
tionalized between LAC and other developed regions, we
conclude that standardized approaches from developed coun-
tries should continue to be used to complement, but not sub-
stitute for, LAC-specific models and frameworks for applying
the UES approach in the region.
Up to this point we have used the global and regional lit-
erature as the evidence and basis for our review and analyses.
But given the noticeable lack of relevant literature from LAC,
here forth we use our expert-based knowledge to elaborate
beyond our review and the three guidelines we laid out. We
noticed a clear omission on studies regarding the role of gov-
ernance and government funding for UES research in LAC.
Thus, we argue that more improved governance systems are
also a necessity in LAC to provide for more effective and
equitable provision of UES. However, increased funding in
UES research, education, and institutional capacity in LAC
are urgently needed to better quantify the supply, and value
the demand for UES in both an equitable and relevant manner.
As in Europe and China, research using and developing
geospatial tools is one approach that can be used to better
understand the socioeconomic inequalities and mismatches
in UES supply distribution across space and time. But, spa-
tially explicit –context relevant –analyses need to also ac-
count for consumer demand for UES and disservices in LAC.
Such efforts can be facilitated by incorporating researcher-
practitioner-citizen participatory processes and by developing
and making available freely available UES datasets to support
research, education, and policies as is common in the US and
Australia. Designing clearinghouses and guidelines in
Spanish and Portuguese language and other local dialects is
also necessary for disseminating science-based information to
government and other administrative units such as smaller
sized cities and communities that are distant from capitals.
Again, as opposed to most high-income English-speaking
developed countries, there is a lack of relevant literature from
LAC; thus researchers and practitioners have to rely, in many
instances, on the applied research and extension education
findings and experiences from countries in the Global North.
Accordingly, we identified the need to account for region-
specific urban ecosystem dynamics and disservices in both
spatial and temporal scales as this is key for effectively apply-
ing the UES concept in the region. For example, research on
UES should build upon traditional biophysical modeling and
valuation based on neoclassical benefit transfer approaches
developed in the US. But, site-specific valuation of UES that
are context-relevant to LAC will also raise awareness on their
supply and demand to beneficiaries and influential decision
makers. Hence, incorporating deliberative valuation, tradition-
al knowledge, and novel environmental psychology and be-
havioral economic approaches, as opposed to conventional
neoclassical or reductionist ones, is warranted. Other emerg-
ing research concepts such as socio-ecological resilience of
cities in LAC, insurance values of mitigating disturbances,
or Nature-Based Solutions, in both monetary and socio-
political metrics could be used to promote UES and conserva-
tion of peri-urban natural areas. Given LAC’sbiodiversityand
socioeconomic disparities, such knowledge is highly relevant
given the prospect of climate change effects. Similarly, the
role of biodiversity and tropical climates in negatively affect-
ing well-being (e.g., disease vectors, crime occurrence, wild-
life and insect nuisances, allergens, thermal comfort) has been
little studied. Improved information for the quantification and
minimization of urban green spaces’costs or disservices is
necessary for valuing the net benefits. Based on our experi-
ence and discussions among the group, such knowledge could
facilitate the incorporation of the UES framework into local-
scale policy and decision-making.
At the national level, LAC has led the development of
innovative instruments and policies that protect biodiversity
and promote ecosystem services. Costa Rica is recognized for
their Payment for Ecosystem Service instruments, Colombia
has the National Policy for Integrated Management of
Biodiversity and its Ecosystem services, and recently Chile
is exploring the use of urban tree plantings as part of
national-level compensation policies for mitigating particulate
matter pollution. But, as LAC’scitiesgrow,amoreregion-
specific understanding of the supply and demand for UES is
crucial for maintaining human well-being and biodiversity in
places where most of the region’s population lives. Such
context-specific information on how to more effectively pro-
mote, deliver, and apply UES is particularly important not
only in LAC, but also in regions such as Africa and Asia,
where inequities, rapid urbanization, and climate change
effects are drastically stressing local and regional eco-
systems and their adaptive capacities. We note that met-
aphors such as UES, green infrastructure, and biodiver-
sity, and more recently nature-based solutions, are con-
stantly evolving as a result of European Union and US-
funded research networks.
Urban Ecosyst
In conclusion, our international and LAC focused review
shows that the use of the UES framework in LAC can be
opportune, especially in benefitting vulnerable communities
and those that are at-risk of landslides, flooding, increased
temperatures, and food security. We propose that UES should
be incorporated institutionally by local-regional governments
as part of land planning and policy uptake, biodiversity con-
servation, and identification of restoration targets.
Incorporating the UES framework can be used to improve
resilience and achieve more sustainable and equitable devel-
opment in urban LAC. However, we believe the biggest chal-
lenge to LAC scientists, planners, and managers is providing
context-specific UES information, instruments, and guide-
lines that can easily be integrated into decision making and
context relevant policies.
Acknowledgements We thank Nina Singh –USA, Juliana Montoya
Arango –Colombia, and Ina Falfán -Mexico for their helpful reviews.
HJH is supported by FONDECYT 1140319 “Vegetation knowledge-
based indicators for urban sustainable planning”; CD is supported by
FONDECYT 3150352 “Provision of urban ecosystem services, explor-
ing the effects of planning, urbanization, climate and environmental con-
ditions on the urban forest of Santiago and La Serena”; FDB is supported
by FONDECYT 3150351 “Modelación de servicios ecosistémicos de
parques urbanos en sectores metropolitanos”. SR is supported by
FONDECYT 1161709 “Contribucion del enfoque de servicios
ecosistémicos a la planificación urbana”; FDB and SR are supported by
CONICYT/FONDAP 15110020.
References
Aguayo MI, Wiegand T, Azócar GD, Wiegand K, Vega CE (2007)
Revealing the driving forces of mid-cities urban growth patterns
using spatial modeling: a case study of Los Ángeles, Chile. Ecol
Soc 12(1):13
Aide TM, Grau HR (2004) Globalization, migration and Latin American
ecosystems. Science 305(5692):1915–1916. https://doi.org/10.
1126/science.1103179
Aleixo KP, Faria LB, Groppo M, Nascimento MMC, Silva CI (2014)
Spatiotemporal distribution of floral resources in a Brazilian city:
implications for maintenance of pollinators especially bees. Urban
For Urban Green 13(4):689–696. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.
2014.08.002
Almeida CMVB, Mariano MV, Agostinho F, Liu GY, Yang ZF, Coscieme
L, Giannetti BF (2018) Comparing costs and supply of supporting
and regulating services provided by urban parks at different spatial
scales. Ecosyst Serv 30:236–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.
2017.07.003
Altieri MA, Companioni N, Cañizares K, Murphy C, Rosset O, Bourque
M, Nicholls CI (1999) The greening of the ‘barrios’:urbanagricul-
ture for food security in Cuba. Agric Hum Values 16(2):131–140.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007545304561
Andersson E, Barthel S, Ahrné K (2007) Measuring social–ecological
dynamics behind the generation of ecosystem services. Ecol Appl
17(5):1267–1278. https://doi.org/10.1890/06-1116.1
Angonese JG, Grau HR (2014) Assessment of swaps and persistence in
land cover changes in a subtropical periurban region, NWArgentina.
Landsc Urban Plan 127:83–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
landurbplan.2014.01.021
Báez-Montenegro A, Bedate AM, Herrero LC, Sanz JT (2012)
Inhabitants' willingness to pay for cultural heritage: a case study in
Valdivia, Chile, using contingent valuation. J Appl Econ 15(2):235–
258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1514-0326(12)60011-7
Balvanera P, Uriarte M, Almeida-Leñero L, Altesor A, Declerk F,
Gardner T, Hall F, Lara A, Laterra P, Peña-Claros M, Silva DM
(2012) Ecosystem service research in Latin America: the state of
art. Ecosyst Serv 2:56–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2012.
09.006
Banzhaf E, Reyes-Paecke SM, de la Barrera F (2018) What really matters
in green infrastructure for the urban quality of life? Santiago de
Chile as a showcase city. In: Kabisch S, Koch F, Gawel E, Haase
A, Knapp S, Krellenberg K, Nivala J, Zehnsdorf A (eds) Urban
transformations: sustainable urban development through resource
efficiency, quality of life and resilience. Future City series.
Springer, Netherlands
Barbedo J, Miguez M, van der Horst D, Marins M (2014) Enhancing
ecosystem services for flood mitigation: a conservation strategy for
peri-urban landscapes? Ecol Soc 19:1–11. https://doi.org/10.5751/
ES06482190254
Baumgardner D, Varela S, Escobedo FJ, Chacalo A, Ochoa C (2012) The
role of a peri-urban forest on air quality improvement in the Mexico
City megalopolis. Environ Pollut 163:174–183. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.envpol.2011.12.016
Benitez G, Perez-Vasquez A, Nava-Tablada M, Equihua M, Lavarez-
Palacios JL (2012) Urban expansion and the environmental effects
of informal settlements on the outskirts of Xalapa City, Veracruz,
Mexico. Environ Urban 24(1):149–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0956247812437520
Biggs TW, Anderson WG, Pombo OA (2015) Concrete and poverty,
vegetation and wealth? A counterexample from remote sensing of
socioeconomic indicators on the US–Mexico border. Prof Geogr 67:
166–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2014.905161
Borsdorf A, Hidalgo R (2010) From polarization to fragmentation.
Recent changes in Latin American urbanization. In: Lindert P,
Verkoren O (eds) Decentralized development in Latin America -
experiences in local governance and local development. Springer,
Dordrecht, pp 23–34
Caballero-Serrano V, Onaindia M, Alday JG, Caballero D, Carrasco JC,
McLaren B, Amigo J (2016) Plant diversity and ecosystem services
in Amazonian homegardens of Ecuador. Agric Ecosyst Environ
225:116–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2016.04.005
Calderón-Contreras R, Quiroz-Rosas LE (2017) Analysing scale, quality
and diversity of green infrastructure and the provision ofurban eco-
system services: a case from Mexico City. Ecosyst Serv 23:127–
137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.12.004
Camacho-Cervantes M, Schondube JE, Castillo A, MacGregor-Fors I
(2014) How do people perceive urban trees? Assessing likes and
dislikes in relation to the trees of a city. Urban Ecosystems 17(3):
761–773. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-014-0343-6
Caro-Borrero A, Corbera E, Neitzel KC, Almeida-Leñero L (2015) “We
are the city lungs”: payments for ecosystem services in the outskirts
of Mexico City. Land Use Policy 43:138–148. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.landusepol.2014.11.008
Casey JF, Kahn JR, Rivas A (2006) Willingness to pay for improved
water service in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. Ecol Econ 58(2):365–
372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.07.016
Celemin JP, Marcos M, Velázquez GA (2013) Calidad ambiental y nivel
socioeconomico, su articulacion en la region Metropolitana de
Buenos Aires. Scripta Nova: Revista Electronica de Geografia y
Ciencias Sociales 17(441):425–462
Chaves LF, Hamer GL, Walker ED, Brown WM, Ruiz MO, Kitron UD
(2011) Climatic variability and landscape heterogeneity impact ur-
ban mosquito diversity and vector abundance and infection.
Ecosphere 26:1–21. https://doi.org/10.1890/ES1100088.1
Urban Ecosyst
Cilento SA (2002) Sobre la vulnerabilidad Urbana de Caracas. Revista
Venezolana de Economia y Ciencias Sociales 8(3):103–118
Clerici N, Rubiano K, Abd-Elrahman A, Posada Hoestettler JM,
Escobedo FJ (2016) Estimating Aboveground Biomass and
Carbon Stocks in Periurban Andean Secondary Forests Using Very
High Resolution Imagery. Forests 7(7):138
Colding J, Lundberg J, Folke C (2006) Incorporating green-area user
groups in urban ecosystem management. AMBIO 35(5):237–244.
https://doi.org/10.1579/05-A-098R.1
Coronel AS, Feldman SR, Jozami E, Facundo K, Piacentini RD,
Dubbeling, Escobedo F (2015) Effects of urban green areas on air
temperature in a medium-sized Argentinian city. AIMS
Environmental Science 2(3):803–816. https://doi.org/10.3934/
environsci.2015.3.803
Costanza, R., d'Arge, R., De Groot, R., Farber, S., Grasso, M., Hannon,
B., Limburg, K., Naeem, S., O'neill, R.V., Paruelo, J. and Raskin,
R.G., 1997. The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural
capital. Nature, 387(6630), pp.253–260
Cram S, Cotler H, Morales LM, Sommer I, Carmona E (2008)
Identificación de los servicios ambientales potenciales de los suelos
en el paisaje urbano del Distrito Federal. Investigaciones
Geográficas 66:81–104. https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.17983
Cui YY, De Foy B (2012) Seasonal variations of the urban heat island at
the surface and the near-surface and reductions due to urban vege-
tation in Mexico City. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 51(5):855–868.
https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-11-0104.1
Cunha DGF, Sabogal-Paz LP, Dodds WK (2016) Land use influence on
raw surface water quality and treatment costs for drinking supply in
São Paulo state (Brazil). Ecol Eng 94:516–524. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.ecoleng.2016.06.063
Da Silva RFB, Alves Rodrigues MD, Vieira SA, Batistella M, Farinaci J
(2017) Perspectives for environmental conservation and ecosystem
services on coupled rural-urban systems. Perspectives in Ecology
and Conservation, In Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecon.2017.
05.005
De Freitas CM, Schütz GE, Oliveira SGD (2007) Environmental sustain-
ability and human well-being indicators from the ecosystem per-
spective in the middle Paraíba region, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil.
Cad Saude Publica 23:S513–S528
De Geoffroy A (2009) Fleeing war and relocating to the urban fringe –
issues and actors: the cases of Khartoum and Bogota. IRRC
91(875):509–526. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383109990361
De Groot R, Brander L, van der Ploeg S, Costanza R, Bernard F, Braat L,
Christie M, Crossman N, Ghermandi A, Hein L (2012) Global esti-
mates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary
units. Ecosyst Serv 1(1):50–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.
2012.07.005
De la Barrera F, Reyes-Paecke S, Banzhaf E (2016) Indicators for green
spaces in contrasting urban settings. Ecol Indic 62:212–219. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.10.027
De la Barrera F, Reyes-Paecke S, Harris J, Bascuñán D, Farías JM
(2016b) People’s perception influences on the use of green spaces
in socio-economically differentiated neighborhoods. Urban For
Urban Green 20:254–264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.09.
007
De Medeiros PM, Ladio AH, Alburquerque UP (2013) Patterns of me-
dicinal plant use by inhabitants of Brazilian urban and rural areas: a
macroscale investigation based on available literature. J
Ethnopharmacol 150(2):729–746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.
2013.09.026
De Mola UL, Ladd B, Duarte S, Borchard N, La Rosa RA, Zutta B (2018)
On the use of hedonic price índices to understand ecosystem service
provisionfrom urban green spacein five Latin Americanmegacities.
Forets 8(12):478
De Souza Filho JR, Santos RC, Silva IR, Elliff CI (2014) Evaluation of
recreational quality, carrying capacity and ecosystem services
supplied by sandy beaches of the municipality of Camaçari, northern
coast of Bahia,Brazil. J Coast Res 70(sp1):527–532. https://doi.org/
10.2112/SI70089.1
Del Angel-Perez AL, Villagomez-Cortes JA, Diaz-Padilla G (2011)
Socioeconomic assessment of hydrologic environmental services
in Veracruz (Coatepec and San Andres Tuxtla). Revista Mexicana
de Ciencias Forestales 2(6):95–112
Dickie IA, Bennett BM, Burrows LE, Nunez MA, Peltzer DA, Porte A,
Richardson DM, Rejmanek M, Rundel PW, van Wilgen BW (2014)
Conflicting values: ecosystem services and invasive tree manage-
ment. Biol Invasions 16:705–719. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s1053001306096
Ditt EH, Mourato S, Ghazoul J, Knight J (2010) Forest conversion and
provision of ecosystem services in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Land Degrad Dev 21:591–603. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.1010
Dobbs C, Escobedo FJ, Zipperer WC (2011) A framework for developing
urban forest ecosystem services and goods indicators. Landsc Urban
Plan 99(3–4):196–206 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.
11.004
Dobbs C, Kendal D, Nitschke CR (2014) Multiple ecosystem services
and disservices of the urban forest establishing their connections
with landscape structure and sociodemographichs. Ecol Indic 43:
44–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.02.007
Dobbs C, Nitschke CR, Kendal D (2017) Assessing the drivers shaping
global patterns of urban vegetation landscape structure. Sci Total
Environ 592:171–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.
058
Dobbs C, Hernández-Moreno Á, Reyes-Paecke S, Miranda MD (2018)
Exploring temporal dynamics of urban ecosystem services in Latin
America: the case of Bogota (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile). Ecol
Indic 85:1068–1080
Dos Santos APM, Passuello A, Schuhmacher M, Nadal M, Domingo JL,
Martinez CA, Segura-Munoz SI, Takayanagui AMM (2014) A sup-
port tool for air pollution health risk management in emerging coun-
tries: a case in Brazil. Hum Ecol Risk Assess 20:1406–1424. https://
doi.org/10.1080/10807039.2013.838117
Escobedo F, Chacalo A (2008) Estimación preliminar de la
descontaminación atmosférica por parte del arbolado urbano de la
ciudad de México. Interciencia 33:29–33
Escobedo FJ, Wagner JE, Nowak DJ, De la Maza CL, Rodriguez M,
Crane DE (2008) Analyzing the cost effectiveness of Santiago,
Chile's policy of using urban forests to improve air quality. J
Environ Manag 86:148–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.
2006.11.029
Escobedo FJ, Kroeger T, Wagner J (2011) Urban forest and pollution
mitigation: analyzing ecosystem services and disservices. Environ
Pollut 159(8–9):2078–2087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2011.
01.010
Escobedo FJ, Clerici N, Staudhammer CL, Tovar-Corzo G (2015) Socio-
ecological dynamics and inequality in Bogotá, Colombia’spublic
urban forests and their ecosystem services. Urban For Urban Green
14(4):1040–1053. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2015.09.011
Escobedo FJ, Clerici N, Staudhammer CL, Feged-Rivadeneira A,
Bohorquez JC, Tovar G (2018) Trees and crime in Bogota,
Colombia: is the link an ecosystem disservice or service? Land
Use Policy 78:583–592
Eva HD, Belward AS, De Miranda EE, Di Bella CM, Gond V, Huber O,
Jones S, Sgrenzaroli M, Fritz S (2004) A land cover map of South
America. Glob Chang Biol 10(5):731–744. https://doi.org/10.1111/
j.1529-8817.2003.00774.x
Faggi A, Caula S (2017) ‘Green’or ‘gray’? Infrastructure and bird ecol-
ogy in urban Latin America. In: MacGregor-Fors I, Escobar-Ibáñez
JF (eds) Avian ecology in Latin American cityscapes. Springer,
Cham, pp 79–98
Urban Ecosyst
FAO (2016) Guidelines on urban and peri-urban forestry, byF. Salbitano,
S. Borelli, M. Conigliaro and Y. Chen. FAO Forestry Paper No. 178.
Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Favaro AKMD, Maria NC, Cutolo SA, de Toledo RF, Landin R, Tolffo
FA, Baptista ACS, Giatti LL (2016) Inequities and challenges for a
metropolitan region to improve climate resilience. Climate Change
and Health p 419–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/9783319246604_24
Fernández L, Herrero CA, Martin I (2010) La impronta del urbanismo
privado. Ecologia de las urbanizaciones cerradas en la region
metripolitana de Buenos Aires. Scripta Nova 14(331):741–798
Figueroa F, Caro-Borrero A, Revollo-Fernandez D, Merino L, Almeida-
Lenero L, Pare L, Espinosa D, Mazari-Hiriart M (2016) “Iliketo
conserve the forest, but I also like the cash”. Socioeconomic factors
influencing the motivation to be engaged in the Mexican payment
for environmental services Programme. J For Econ 22:36–51.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2015.11.002
Flores-Meza S, Katunaric-Nuñez M, Rovira-Soto J, Rebolledo-Gonzalez
M (2013) Identificación de áreas favorables Para la Riqueza de
fauna vertebrada en la zona Urbana y peri-Urbana de la Región
Metropolitana, Chile. Rev Chil Hist Nat 86(3):265–277. https://
doi.org/10.4067/S0716-078X2013000300004
Gómez-Baggethun E, Barton DN (2013) Classifying and valuing ecosys-
tem services for urban planning. Ecol Econ 86:235–245. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.08.019
González SA,Holtmann-Ahumada G (2017) Quality of tourist beaches of
northern Chile: a first approach for ecosystem-based management.
Ocean Coast Manag 137:154–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ocecoaman.2016.12.022
González Y, Ojeda-Revah L (2017) Conservación de vegetación para
reducir riesgos hidrometereológicos en una metrópoli fronteriza
Estudios Fronterizos 2017 18(35):47–69
González-Oreja JA, Bonache-Regidor C, De La Fuente-Díaz-Ordaz AA
(2010) Far from the noisy world? Modelling the relationships be-
tween park size, tree cover and noise levels in urban green spaces of
the city of Puebla, Mexico. Interciencia 35(7):486–492
Grimm NB, Faeth SH, Golubiewski NE, Redman CL, Wu J, Bai X,
Briggs JM (2008) Global change and the ecology of cities.
Science 319(5864):756–760. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.
1150195
Gutiérrez N, Gärtner S, Pacheco CE, Reif A (2013) The recovery of the
lower montane cloud forest in the Mucujún watershed, Mérida,
Venezuela. Reg Environ Chang 13:1069–1085. https://doi.org/10.
1007/s101130130413y
Haase D, Larondelle N, Andersson E, Artmann M, Borgström S, Breuste
J, Gomez-Baggethun E, Gren A, Hamstead Z, Hansen R, Kabisch
N, Kremer P, Langemeyer J, Lorance RE, McPhearson T (2014) A
quantitative review of urban ecosystem service assessments: con-
cepts, models, and implementation. Ambio 43(4):413–433. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0504-0
Hardoy J, Pandiella G (2009) Urban poverty and vulnerability to climate
change in Latin America. EnvironUrban 21(1):203–224. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0956247809103019
Hasse D (2015) Reflections about blue ecosystem services in cities.
Sustainability Water Qual Ecol 5:77–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
swaqe.2015.02.003
Henrique W (2006) A cidade e a natureza: a apropriação, a valorizaçãoe a
sofisticação da natureza nos empreendimentos imobiliários de alto
padrão em São Paulo. Geosup 20:65–77
Inostroza L, Baur R, Csaplovics E (2013) Urban sprawl and fragmenta-
tion in Latin America: a dynamic quantification and characterization
of spatial patterns. J Environ Manag 115:87–97. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.jenvman.2012.11.007
Isendahl C, Smith ME (2013) Sustainable agrarian urbanism: the low-
density cities of the Mayas and Aztecs. Cities 31:132–143. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2012.07.012
Isernhagen I, le Bourlegat JMG, Carboni M (2009) Trazendo a riqueza
arbórea regional para dentro das cidades: possibilidades, limitacões
e beneficios. Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Arborização
Urbana 4(2):117–138
Jardim MH, Bursztyn MA (2015) Payment for environmental services in
water resources management: the case of Extrema (MG), Brazil.
Engenharia Sanitaria e Ambiental 20:353–360. https://doi.org/10.
1590/S141341522015020000106299
Jujnovsky J, Ramos A, Caro-Borrero Á, Mazari-Hiriart M, Maass M,
Almeida-Leñero L (2017) Water assessment in a peri-urban water-
shed in Mexico City: a focus on an ecosystem services approach.
Ecosyst Serv 24:91–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.02.
005
Kabisch N, Frantzeskaki N, Pauleit S, Naumann S et al (2016) Nature-
based solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban
areas: perspectives on indicators, knowledge gaps, barriers, and op-
portunities for action. Ecol Soc 21(39). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-
08373-210239
Kronenberg J (2014) What can the current debate on ecosystem services
learn from the past? Lessons from economic ornithology. Geoforum
55:164–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.06.011
Larqué-Saavedra BS, Valdivia-Alcalá R,Islas-Gutiérrez F, Romo-Lozano
JL (2004) Economic valuation of the environmental service of the
forest of the Ixtapaluca municipality in state of México. Rev Int
Contam Ambient 20(4):193–202
Lima JMT, Brandeis T, Staudhammer C, Escobedo F, Zipperer W (2013)
Temporal dynamics of a subtropical urban forest in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, 2001-2010. Landsc Urban Plan 120:96–106. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.landurbplan.2013.08.007
Luederitz C, Brink E, Gralla F, Hermelingmeier V, Meyer M, Niven L,
Abson DJ (2015) A review of urban ecosystem services: six key
challenges for future research. Ecosyst Serv 14:98–112. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.05.001
Lustig N, Lopez-Calva LF, Ortiz-Juarez E (2015) Deconstructing the
decline in inequality in Latin America. In: Basu K, Stiglitz J (eds)
Proceedings of IEA Roundtable on Share Prosperity and Growth.
Palgrave MacMillan, New York
MacGregor-Fors I, Escobar F, Rueda-Hernández R, Avendaño-Reyes S,
Baena ML, Bandala VM, Chacón-Zapata S, Guillén-Servent A,
González-García F, Lorea-Hernández F, Montes de Oca E,
Montoya L, Pineda E, Ramírez-Restrepo L, Rivera-García E,
Utrera-Barrillas E (2016) City “green”contributions: the role of
urban greenspaces as reservoirs for biodiversity. Forests 7(7):146.
https://doi.org/10.3390/f7070146
Machado FH, Silva LFB, Dupas FA, Mattedi AP, Vergara FE (2014)
Economic assessment of urban watersheds: developing mechanisms
for environmental protection of the Feijão river, São Carlos - SP,
Brazil. Braz J Biol 74(3):677–684. https://doi.org/10.1590/bjb.
2014.0073
Magrin G, Gay-García C, Cruz-Choque D, Giménez JC, Moreno AR,
Nagy GJ (2007) Latin America. In: Parry ML, Canziani OF,
Palutikof JP, van der Linden PJ, Hanson CE (eds) Climate change
2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of work-
ing group II to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental
panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
pp 581–616
Mazari-Hiriart M, Perez-Ortiz G, Orta-Ledesma MT, Armas-Vargas F,
Tapia MA, Solano-Ortiz R, Silva MA, Yanez-Noguez I, Lopez-
Vidal Y, Diaz-Avalos C (2014) Final opportunity to rehabilitate an
urban river as a water source for Mexico City. PLoS One 9:1–17.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102081
Mendoza-González G, Martínez ML, Lithgow D, Pérez-Maqueo O,
Simonin P (2012) Land use change and its effects on the value of
ecosystem services along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Ecol Econ
82:23–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.07.018
Urban Ecosyst
Mendoza-Hernandez PE, Orozco-Segovia A, Meave JA, Valverde T,
Martinez-Ramos M (2013) Vegetation recovery and plant facilita-
tion in a human-disturbed lava field in a megacity: searching tools
for ecosystem restoration. Plant Ecol 214(1):153–167. https://doi.
org/10.1007/s11258-012-0153-y
Merlín-Uribe Y, Contreras-Hernández A, Astier-Calderón M, Jensen OP,
Zaragoza R, Zambrano L (2013) Urban expansion into a protected
natural area in Mexico City: alternative management scenarios. J
Environ Plan Manag 56:398–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/
09640568.2012.683686
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and human well-
being: a framework for assessment. Island Press Inc, Washington,
DC
Mitsch WJ, Hernandez ME (2013) Landscape and climate change threats
to wetlands of north and Central America. Aquat Sci 75:133–149.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s0002701202627
Moser A, Uhl E, Rotzer T, Biber P, Caldentey JM, Pretzsch H (2018)
Effects of climate and drought events on urban tree growth in
Santiago de Chile. Cienc Invest Agrar 45:35–50
Myers N, Mittermeier RA, Mittermeier CG, da Fonseca GA, Kent J
(2000) Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature
403(6772):853–858.
Nadal A, Cerón-Palma I, García-Gómez C, Pérez-Sánchez M, Rodríguez-
Labajos B, Cuerva E, JosaA, Rieradevall J (2018) Social perception
of urban agriculture in Latin-America. A case study in Mexican
social housing. Land Use Policy 76:719–734
Nickson A (2001) Where Is local government going in Latin America? A
comparative perspective (Working paper No. 6). ICLD Swedish
International Centre for Local Democracy). http://www.icld.se/pdf/
icld_wp6_printerfriendly.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2016
Ordóñez C, Duinker PN (2014) Urban forest values of the citizenry in
three Colombian cities. Soc Nat Resour 27(8):834–849. https://doi.
org/10.1080/08941920.2014.905891
Pauchard A, Barbosa O (2013) Regional assessment of Latin America:
rapid urban development and social economic inequity threaten bio-
diversity hotspots. In: Elmqvist T, Fragkias M, Goodness J,
Güneralp B, Marcotullio PJ, McDonald RI, Parnell S, Schewenius
M, Sendstad M, Seto KC, Wilkinson C (eds) Urbanization, biodi-
versity and ecosystem services: challenges and opportunities.
Springer, Dordrecht, pp 589–608
Pedlowski MA, Da Silva VAC, Adell JJC, Heynen NC (2002) Urban
forest and environmental inequality in Campos Dos Goytacazes,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Urban Ecosystems 6(1):9–20. https://doi.
org/10.1023/A:1025910528583
Perez-Campuzano E, Avila-Foucat VS, Perevochtchikova M (2016)
Environmental policies in the peri-urban área of Mexico City: the
perceived effects of three environmental programs. Cities 50:129–
136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.08.013
Perrings C, Duraiappah A, Larigauderie A, Mooney H (2011) The biodi-
versity and ecosystem service science-policy interface. Science 331:
17–19
Pimienta-Barrios E, Robles-Murguía C, Carvajal S, Muñoz-Urias A,
Martínez-Chávez C, León-Santos S (2014) Servicios ambientales
de la vegetación en ecosistemas urbanos en el contexto del cambio
climático. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Forestales 5(22):28–39
Pina WHA, Martínez CIP (2014) Urban material flow analysis: an ap-
proach for Bogotá, Colombia. Ecol Indic 42:32–42. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.10.035
Pisanty I, Mazari M, Ezcurra E (2009) El reto de la conservación de la
biodiversidad en zonas urbanas y periurbanas.CONABIO. Capital
natural de México, Vol. II: Estado de conservación y tendencias de
cambio. http://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/pais/pdf/CapNatMex/
Vol%20II/II17_El%20reto%20de%20la%20conservacion%20de%
20la%20biodiversidad%20en%20zon.pdf. Accessed 11 Nov 2015
Ponce-Donoso M, Vallejos-Barra Ó, Daniluk-Mosquera G (2012)
Comparación de fórmulas chilenas e internacionales Para valorar
el arbolado urbano. Bosque 33(1):69–81. https://doi.org/10.4067/
S0717-92002012000100008
Pougy N, Martins E, Verdi M, de Oliveira JA, Maurenza D, Amaro R,
Martinelli G (2014) Urban forests and the conservation ofthreatened
plant species: the case of the Tijuca National Park, Brazil. Nat
Conservação 12:170–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ncon.2014.09.
007
Reyes-Paecke S, Figueroa IM (2010) Distribución, superficie y
accesibilidad de las áreas verdes en Santiago de Chile. EURE
36(109):89–110. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0250-
71612010000300004
Reyes-Paecke S, Meza L (2011) Jardines residenciales en Santiago de
Chile: extensión, distribución y cobertura vegetal. Rev Chil Hist
Nat 84(4):581–592. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0716-
078X2011000400010
Ribeiro FP, Ribeiro KT (2016) Participative mapping of cultural ecosys-
tem services in Pedra Branca State Park, Brazil. Nat Conservação
14:120–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ncon.2016.09.004
Roberts BR (2005) Globalization and Latin American cities. Int J Urban
Reg Res 29(1):110–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.
00573.x
Romero H, Vasquez A, Fuentes C, Salgado M, Schmidt A, Banzhaf E
(2012) Assessing urban environmental segregation (UES). The case
of Santiago de Chile. Ecol Indic 23:76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ecolind.2012.03.012
Romero-Lankao P (2007) Are we missing the point? Particularities of
urbanization, sustainability and carbon emissions in Latin
American cities. Environ Urban 19(1):159–175. https://doi.org/10.
1177/0956247807076915
Roy S, Byrne J, Pickering C (2012) A systematic quantitative review of
urban tree benefits, costs and assessment methods across cities in
different climatic zones. Urban For Urban Green 11(4):351–363.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2012.06.006
Russo A, Escobedo FJ, Cirella GT, Zerbe S (2017a) Edible green infra-
structure: an approach and review of provisioning ecosystem ser-
vices and disservices in urban environments. Agric Ecosyst Environ
242:53–66
Russo A, Ignatieva M, Cirella GT, Marchensini LB, Krestov P, Korzhov
E, Kalita V, Pavlosky V, Escobedo FJ (2017b) Biophilia: Nature-
based solutions for sustainable cities. In: Three pillars of landscape
architecture: Design,planning and management. Far Eastern Federal
University, Saint Petersburg. pp 105–112
Sacchi LV, Powell PA, Gasparri NI, Grau R (2017) Air quality loss in
urban centers of the Argentinean dry Chaco: wind and dust control
as two scientifically neglected ecosystemservices. Ecosyst Serv 24:
234–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.03.006
Salazar A, Moreira-Muñoz A, del Río C (2015) La Campana-Peñuelas
biosphere Reserve in Central Chile: threats and challenges in a peri-
urban transition zone. Eco Mont 7:66–71. https://doi.org/10.1553/
eco.mont71s66
Santos AR, Rocha CFD, Bergallott HG (2010) Native and exotic species
in the urban landscape of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: density,
richness andarboreal deficit. Urban Ecosyst 13(2):209–222. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s11252-009-0113-z
Sarukhán J, Jiménez R (2016) Generating intelligence for decision mak-
ing and sustainable use of natural capital in Mexico. Curr Opin
Environ Sustain 19:153–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.
02.002
Scarano FR, Ceotto P (2015) Brazilian Atlantic forest: impact, vulnera-
bility, and adaptation to climate change. Biodivers Conserv 24:
2319–2331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s105310150972y
ScopellitM, Carrus G, Adinolfi C, Suarez G, Colangelo G, Lafortezza R,
Panno A, Sanesi G (2016) Staying in touch with nature and well-
being in different income groups: the experience of urban parks in
Bogotá. Landsc Urban Plan 148:139–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
landurbplan.2015.11.002
Urban Ecosyst
TEEB (2011) TEEB manual for cities: Ecosystem services in urban man-
agement, The Economics of ecosystems and biodiversity (TEEB).
www.teebweb.org
Tognella-de-Rosa MMP, Cunha SR, Soares MLG, Schaeffer-Novelli Y,
Lugli DO (2006) Mangrove evaluation-an essay. J Coast Res 2:
1219–1224
Tratalos J, Fuller RA, Warren PH, Davies RG, Gaston KJ (2007) Urban
form, biodiversity potential and ecosystem services. Landsc Urban
Plan 83(4):308–317 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2007.05.
003
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population
Division (2014) World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision,
Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/352)
United Nations, United Nations Development Program (2015)
Sustainable Development Goals
United Nations, United Nations Environment Programme (2010)
Environment Outlook: Latin America and the Caribbean GEO-
LAC 3. Panama - United Nations Environmental Programme
Vargas-González HH, Arreola-Lizárraga JA, Mendoza-Salgado RA,
Méndez-Rodríguez LC, Lechuga-Deveze CH, Padilla-Arredondo
G, Cordoba-Matson M (2014) Effects of sewage discharge on tro-
phic state and water quality in a coastal ecosystem of the Gulf of
California. Sci World J 2014:1–8. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/
618054
Von Döhren P, Haase D (2015) Ecosystem disservices research: a review
of the state of the art with a focus on cities. Ecol Indic 52:490–497.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.12.027
Williams-Linera G, Lopez-Barrera F, Bonilla-Moheno M (2015)
Establishing the baseline for cloud forest restoration in a peri-
urban landscape. Madera y Bosques 21:89–101
Willis KJ, Petrokofsky G (2017) The natural capital of city trees. Science
356:374–376
Wright HE, Wenderl W, Zarger RK, Mihelcic JR (2012) Accessibility and
usability: green space preferences, perceptions, and barriers in a
rapidly urbanizing city in Latin America. Landsc Urban Plan
107(3):272–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.06.003
Affiliations
Cynnamon Dobbs
1
&Francisco J. Escobedo
2
&Nicola Clerici
2
&Francisco de la Barrera
3
&Ana Alice Eleuterio
4
&
Ian MacGregor-Fors
5
&Sonia Reyes-Paecke
6
&Alexis Vásquez
7
&Jorge Danilo Zea Camaño
8
&H. Jaime Hernández
9
1
Center for Modeling and Monitoring Ecosystems, Universidad
Mayor, Jose Toribio Medina 29, Santiago, Chile
2
Functional and Ecosystem Ecology Unit (EFE), Biology Program,
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Universidad del
Rosario, Kr 26 No 63B-48, Bogotá, DC, Colombia
3
Geography Department and Center for Sustainable Urban
Development, Universidad de Concepcion, Casilla 160-C,
Concepcion, Chile
4
Instituto Latino-Americano de Economía, Sociedade e Política,
Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana, Av. Tancredo
Neves 6731, Foz do Iguaçu, PR CEP 85867-970, Brazil
5
Red de Ambiente y Sustentabilidad, Instituto de Ecología, A.C,
Carretera antigua a Coatepec 351, El Haya, Xalapa,
91070 Veracruz, Mexico
6
Department of Ecosystems and Environment, Faculty of Agronomy
and Forest Engineering and Center for Sustainable Urban
Development, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña
Mackenna, 4860 Macul, Chile
7
Geography Department, Faculty of Architecture and Urban
Planning, Universidad de Chile, Av Portugal 84, Santiago, Chile
8
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Av. Pref. Lothário Meissner, 632,
Curitiba, Paraná CEP: 80210-170, Brazil
9
Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Lab, Faculty of Forestry and
Nature Conservation, Universidad de Chile, Santa Rosa, 11365 La
Pintana, Chile
Urban Ecosyst
A preview of this full-text is provided by Springer Nature.
Content available from Urban Ecosystems
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.