scholarly journals Engaging students in redesigning a local urban space to improve ecosystem services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth N. Hane ◽  
Karl F. Korfmacher
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Multiple Viewpoints ◽  
Green Ideas

AbstractEcosystem services are an important, but often invisible component of the urban landscape. Humans have altered the environment in cities, leading to degraded or missing ecosystem services in many cases. To enhance or replace these services, many urban municipalities are integrating green spaces and infrastructure into urban planning. We have designed an activity to help undergraduate students: 1) recognize the importance of urban ecosystem services, 2) identify when they are degraded or missing, and 3) integrate “green” ideas from multiple sources to propose improvements to them. To help students achieve these goals, we asked them to evaluate an underutilized space on their own campus, and propose a redesign of that space to support ecosystem services. While many students struggled initially to link urban ecosystem services with specific proposed improvements, we found that having students work together in groups for a second redesign often improved understanding and also resulted in more creative and interdisciplinary designs. The exercise also helped students to better identify ecosystem services and allowed them to practice integrating multiple viewpoints while proposing solutions to local environmental problems.

scholarly journals Planning of Urban Green Spaces: An Ecological Perspective on Human Benefits

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Teodoro Semeraro ◽  
Aurelia Scarano ◽  
Riccardo Buccolieri ◽  
Angelo Santino ◽  
Eeva Aarrevaara
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Green ◽  
Urban Green Spaces

In the context of urban land-use growth and the consequent impacts on the environment, green spaces provide ecosystem services for human health. The ecosystem services concept synthesises human–environmental interactions through a series of combined components of biodiversity and abiotic elements, linking ecological processes and functions. The concept of green infrastructure (GI) in the urban context emphasises the quality and quantity of urban and peri-urban green spaces and natural areas. In dense urban contexts, the applications of GI are limited and not applied to the potential urban spaces such as roofs and gardens. Often, roofs are characterised by impermeable paved surfaces with negative effects on human well-being, whereas garden designs do not consider social needs and environmental interactions. The role of urban stressors or the urban context as a driving force or pressure of urban green space is not always well understood and employed in the planning of green spaces. This is partly due to a knowledge gap between different science disciplines that operate on different scales, from single processes of the plants (which focus on plant responses to environmental stresses affecting human well-being) to urban ecosystems (which focus on the biodiversity and urban space planning–human well-being relationship). This can create a paradox, as green spaces that are not adequately designed might not produce the expected effects. In this paper, an overview of benefits and limitations of applying the ecosystem services approach when designing green spaces is presented. The focus is on the main urban ecosystem services provided by green roofs and community gardens such as GI that can represent strategies to provide ecological and social multifunctionality to waterproofed surfaces connected to the buildings and low-exploited gardens being the main areas that affect dense urban settlements, and thus, increasing the ecosystem services in the urban environment, such as reducing the Urban Heat Island, as well as flooding events. Specifically, the paper highlights (i) feedback between ecological processes and functions that support ecosystem services, (ii) urban environmental stresses in relation to disservices that these can create for human well-being and (iii) key issues that should be considered in the planning and design of urban ecosystem services. Such a new vision of urban ecosystem services highlights the need to look at GI as an active part of the urban space design in the built environment.

scholarly journals Urban Ecosystem services on the local level: Urban green spaces as providers

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Breuste ◽  
Johanna Schnellinger ◽  
Salman Qureshi ◽  
Anna Faggi
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Green Space ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Green ◽  
Urban Green Spaces

AbstractBreuste J., Schnellinger J., Qureshi S., Faggi A.: Urban ecosystem services on the local level: Urban green spaces as providers. Ekologia (Bratislava), Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 209-304, 2013. Ecosystem services are provided at different spatial and service/functional scales. The local level is the basic unit for ecosystem services, especially when it comes to the human dimension of urban landscapes. These services are provided by green elements (patches) or basic complex ecosystems (green areas) which differ from their neighbourhoods through their structures and functions. This study reviews the generally available knowledge on urban green functions and services at the site level and explains them by using own studies in five different cities in three different continents related to distinct ecosystem services. This allows the development of a methodology to evaluate and compare ecosystem services at the site level. The methodology is based at two levels, patch and green space, and includes the relationship with the surrounding green and built-up space. Different urban green space types are characterized by their internal structures of vegetation, size, shape and location in relation to at least a semi-quantitative scaling of their urban ecosystem services. The evaluated urban green spaces are public urban green spaces. The urban ecosystem services assessed include climate regulation, biodiversity, nature experience, recreation and health. The actual urban challenges, such as land use change, adaptation to climate change, demographic change and urban cultural diversity, demand a systematic and very concrete monitoring of urban ecosystem services at the site level.

scholarly journals Shedding Light on Peri-Urban Ecosystem Services Using Automated Content Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 9182
Author(s):  
Gabriella Vindigni ◽  
Alexandros Mosca ◽  
Tommaso Bartoloni ◽  
Daniela Spina
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Ecosystems ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Starting Point

The objective of this paper is to provide an overall perspective on peri-urban ecosystem services in European Countries. The phenomenon of urbanization affecting our era has seen the shift of the city from compact and well-defined structures to agglomerations with a seamless expansion. This has led to several environmental consequences that have affected the urbanized areas and the surroundings. The peri-urban areas may be the main urban design and planning challenge of the 21st century. These hybrid landscapes, characterized by high fragmentation, can be turned into opportunities to improve the sustainability and quality of urban areas, generating multiple economic, social and environmental benefits. Areas beyond the immediate urban core can be considered a zone of influence, which represent a critical resource in terms of provisioning, regulating, supporting services and cultural ecosystem services. Our study has been developed in the framework of the project “Fertile Lands, Fragile Lands” funded by the University of Catania. A multi-phased method has been applied, showing strong, heterogeneous ties between landscape and ecosystem services. While the importance of literature studies on this topic is well recognized, the same attention has not been placed on the tools and methods of conducting systematic and incremental literature reviews. Using Leximancer software, we propose a text mining approach to extract relevant themes and concepts as well as related topics of interest from identified literature on peri-urban ecosystems. We first introduce the overall methodology and then discuss each phase in detail. The outputs can be used as starting point for broad exploratory reviews and allow further exploration in this issue. The results show how the peri-urban space can be seen as a mosaic in which the settlement, the agricultural and the environmental systems interact and coexist, placing at the centre the relationship of reciprocity between the built environment and the open territory.

The impacts of land use/land cover changes on the supply-demand budget of urban ecosystem services

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Syed Atif Bokhari ◽  
Zafeer Saqib ◽  
Amjad Ali ◽  
Arif Mahmud ◽  
Nadia Akhtar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Land Cover Changes ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services

scholarly journals Assessing urban ecosystem services in support of spatial planning in the Hague, the Netherlands

2021 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 104195
Author(s):  
Janneke van Oorschot ◽  
Benjamin Sprecher ◽  
Maarten van 't Zelfde ◽  
Peter M. van Bodegom ◽  
Alexander P.E. van Oudenhoven
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
The Hague

scholarly journals Urban ecosystem services in strategic planning in Swedish municipalities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åsa Ode Sang ◽  
Frederik Aagaard Hagemann ◽  
Nils Ekelund ◽  
Jessica Svännel
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Strategic Management ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Usa

AbstractResearch to date on urban ecosystem services has mainly been conducted in large cities, particularly in China, the USA and some European countries. This study examined the provision of urban ecosystem services in a Swedish municipality context, based on interviews with municipal stakeholders in strategic management and planning from six municipalities and a review of existing publications readily available to practitioners. The analysis focused on (1) the ecosystem services explicitly covered, (2) whether multifunctionality was covered and specific synergies and trade-offs identified and, (3) the spatial scale and context used for ecosystem services (valuation/mapping, planning, design or maintenance) in practical application. The results showed that regulatory services are very much the focus in municipal operations as well as in publications available to practitioners. This is reflected in the implementation of the concept through problem solving often related to regulatory services, using multifunctionality and win-win situations in ecosystem service supply. These findings contribute to the growing body of work exploring how the concept of ecosystem services is adapted and utilised in practice.

scholarly journals A Differentiated Spatial Assessment of Urban Ecosystem Services Based on Land Use Data in Halle, Germany

Land ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janis Arnold ◽  
Janina Kleemann ◽  
Christine Fürst
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services ◽  
Climate Regulation ◽  
Land Use Types ◽  
Cooling Effects

Urban ecosystem services (ES) contribute to the compensation of negative effects caused by cities by means of, for example, reducing air pollution and providing cooling effects during the summer time. In this study, an approach is described that combines the regional biotope and land use data set, hemeroby and the accessibility of open space in order to assess the provision of urban ES. Hemeroby expresses the degree of naturalness of land use types and, therefore, provides a differentiated assessment of urban ES. Assessment of the local capacity to provide urban ES was conducted with a spatially explicit modeling approach in the city of Halle (Saale) in Germany. The following urban ES were assessed: (a) global climate regulation, (b) local climate regulation, (c) air pollution control, (d) water cycle regulation, (e) food production, (f) nature experience and (g) leisure activities. We identified areas with high and low capacity of ES in the urban context. For instance, the central parts of Halle had very low or no capacity to provide ES due to highly compact building styles and soil sealing. In contrast, peri-urban areas had particularly high capacities. The potential provision of regulating services was spatially limited due to the location of land use types that provide these services.

Exploring local consequences of two land-use alternatives for the supply of urban ecosystem services in Stockholm year 2050

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 615-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaan-Henrik Kain ◽  
Neele Larondelle ◽  
Dagmar Haase ◽  
Anna Kaczorowska
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Urban Ecosystem ◽  
Urban Ecosystem Services
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document