Seasonal and vegetational variations of culturable bacteria concentrations in air from urban forest parks: a case study in Hunan, China

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen-Ni Liao ◽  
Hui-Juan Xu ◽  
Jiaojiao Ma ◽  
Maojuan Li ◽  
Caisheng He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Culturable Bacteria ◽  
Forest Parks

Urban forest restoration cost modeling: a Seattle natural areas case study

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M. Daniels ◽  
Weston Brinkley ◽  
Michael D. Paruszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Forest Restoration ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Cost Modeling ◽  
Natural Areas ◽  
Restoration Cost

scholarly journals Residents’ Spatial Preference for Urban Forest Park Route during Physical Activities

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (22) ◽  
pp. 11756
Author(s):  
Mengmeng Cai ◽  
Chuyun Cui ◽  
Lin Lin ◽  
Shuyi Di ◽  
Zheng Zhao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Cognitive Maps ◽  
Physical Activities ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Spatial Image ◽  
Spatial Preference ◽  
Forest Parks

Urban parks positively affect the life quality and health of urban residents as well as the environment where they live. When it comes to the design of a future urban forest park, it is necessary to consider the protection of ecological environment, landscape sustainability and practicability. This study explored residents’ spatial preference for urban forest parks based on preference survey data. According to the rating scores obtained for four urban forest park routes during physical activities, this study used cognitive maps and multinomial logit models to figure out the potential influencing factors affecting residents’ spatial preference while they engage in physical activities. The results suggest that forest routes are still the primary choice for urban residents. Although familiarity with the spatial image preference for urban forest parks varied from person to person, residents’ choice of route shows certain commonalities, which was reflected in the sequential cognitive maps obtained from them. In addition, residents’ route preference is influenced by their exercise habits, environmental preference and residential location. There is also a certain correlation between residents’ preference and their characteristics. This study provides additional information for planners, developers, engineers, architects and foresters in building a more suitable environment that is aesthetically appealing and ecologically sound for physical exercising.

scholarly journals THE POTENTIAL OF URBAN FOREST PARK FOR SUSTAINABLE CITY

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noralizawati Mohamed ◽  
Noriah Othman ◽  
Mohd Hisham Ariffin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Future Generation ◽  
Urban Greening ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Research Institution ◽  
Planning Department ◽  
To Come ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
The Town

The potential of Urban Forest Park and publics' views are clearly pertinent in urban greening and sustainability, yet they are often ignored by certain countries. In line with this, the Town and Country Planning Department and National Landscape Department had taken steps by developing more urban parks and urban forest parks to enhance the quality and sustainability in urban environment. The study was conducted at FRIM(Forest Research Institution of Malaysia) with 375 respondents participated in this study. It is found that the respondents' evaluation on environmental, social and physical contribution at study area is associated with great and intense values for city sustainability. Public opinion and reason to come to the study area should be taken into account by professionals since they are the users and responsible to ensure thesustainability of urban forest for future generation. Even though the overall percentage of survey showed that public gave good expectation, however, the small percentage could be an eye opener as they assumed the existing setting will face big challenge to sustain in the future.

scholarly journals Visitors’ emotional expression in urban forest parks: What can we know about on-line facial images from the Social Networking Services?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoming Guan ◽  
Honxu Wei ◽  
Xingyuan He ◽  
Zhibin Ren ◽  
Xin Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
Facial Images

Urban forests can attract visitors by the function of well-being improvement, which can be evaluated by analyzing the big-data from the social networking services (SNS). In this study, 935 facial images of visitors to nine urban forest parks were screened and downloaded from check-in records in the SNS platform of Sina Micro-Blog at cities of Changchun, Harbin, and Shenyang in Northeast China. Images were recognized for facial expressions by FaceReaderTM to read out eight emotional expressions: neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and contempt. The number of images by women was larger than that by men. Compared to images from Changchun, those from Shenyang harbored higher neutral degree, which showed a positive relationship with the distance of forest park from downtown. In Changchun, the angry, surprised, and disgusted degrees decreased with the increase of distance of forest park from downtown, while the happy and disgusted degrees showed the same trend in Shenyang. In forest parks at city center and remote-rural areas, the neutral degree was positively correlated with the angry, surprised and contempt degrees but negatively correlated with the happy and disgusted degrees. In the sub-urban area the correlation of neutral with both surprised and disgusted degrees disappeared. Our study can be referred to by urban planning to evaluate the perceived well-being in urban forests through analyzing facial expressions of images from SNS.

Soil microbial biomass and functional diversity in urban forest parks and suburban forests of various biomes in European Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Ananyeva ◽  
Ruslan Khatit ◽  
Sofia Sushko ◽  
Anna Buyvolova ◽  
Andrey Dolgikh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Biomass ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
European Russia ◽  
Deciduous Forests ◽  
Forest Steppe ◽  
Soil Microbial ◽  
Explained Variance ◽  
Bioclimatic Conditions ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
Suburban Forests

<p>Forest parks play an important role in the sustainable functioning of urban ecosystems. In contrast to natural forests, urban forests are under continuous anthropogenic pressure, affecting the soil microbial community functioning and its capacity to provide many ecosystem services. Moreover, another significant factor determining such functioning is bioclimatic conditions, i.e., city geographic location. Our study aims to examine the effect of urbanization on soil microbial biomass and functional diversity along a latitudinal gradient of European Russia. Urban forest parks (UFP) were chosen in Moscow, Tula, and Belgorod cities located in mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests, deciduous forests, and forest-steppe biomes of European Russia, respectively (17 sites). Outside of the cities the reference suburban forests (SUF) were selected (12 sites). When selecting sites, we considered the following criteria: i) same soil reference group within the biome (Retisols, Luvisols, Phaeozems in mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests, deciduous forests, and forest-steppe, respectively), ii) loam parent materials, and iii) forest aged ≥60 years. In each UFP and SUF, five spatially distributed plots were chosen, in which soil samples were taken from the upper 10 cm layer without litter (totally 85 and 60 for UFP and SUF). For freshly collected soil samples, microbial biomass carbon content (MBC, substrate-induced respiration method) and basal respiration (BR; rate of CO<sub>2</sub> release) were measured, then the ratio BR / MBC = <em>q</em>CO<sub>2</sub> was calculated. The community level physiological profile of soil microorganisms (CLPP, MicroResp<sup>TM</sup> technique) indicating the microbial ability to utilize different organic substrates (carbohydrates, acids: amino, carboxylic, phenolic, 14 totally) was tested. CLPP data were used to calculate the Shannon–Wiener diversity index (H<sub>CLPP</sub>).</p><p>It was found that soil BR decreased on average from SUF to USP in all studied biomes, while the MBC content did not change significantly. A significant increase of MBC in USP and SUF soils was observed from north to south (from mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests to forest-steppe), and for <em>q</em>CO<sub>2</sub> – decreasing. The CLPP of the studied soils were dominated by microorganisms consuming carboxylic acids (ascorbic and citric) and carbohydrates (glucose, fructose, galactose). Cluster analysis identified two groups that differed by soil CLPP: i) mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests and deciduous forests (Moscow, Tula) and ii) forest-steppe (Belgorod). Soil H<sub>CLPP</sub> index didn’t significantly differ between SUF and UFP in all studied biomes. Two-way ANOVA showed that soil MBC, <em>q</em>CO<sub>2</sub>, and H<sub>CLPP</sub> changes were more associated with bioclimatic conditions (18-47% of explained variance, P <0.05) than urbanization (P> 0.05). On contrary, soil BR was more sensitive to urbanization (4% of explained variance, P <0.05) than to the change of bioclimatic conditions (P> 0.05). Notably, driving factors of spatial variation for the studied soil microbial properties within each city (53-92% unexplained variance) have yet to be identified.</p><p> </p><p>This study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-04-00148.</p>

Can owls be used to monitor the impacts of urbanisation? A cautionary tale of variable detection

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raylene Cooke ◽  
Hannah Grant ◽  
Isabel Ebsworth ◽  
Anthony R. Rendall ◽  
Bronwyn Isaac ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Landscape Change ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Biodiversity Monitoring ◽  
Occupancy Models ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
Temperature Conditions ◽  
Detection Probabilities ◽  
Barn Owls ◽  
Time Of Year

Context Due to their important ecological roles, predators are increasingly being suggested as targets for biodiversity studies investigating how they respond to landscape change and transformation. But there is limited literature investigating our capacity to accurately monitor changes in their occupancy. Aims To test the efficacy of playback surveys for monitoring owls as a basis for investigating change in owl occupancy over time. We ask whether playback is an effective tool, and whether it can be optimised to improve its utility. Methods Using the urban–forest interface of Melbourne, Australia, as a case study, we used playback techniques to survey for the presence of three owl species: the powerful owl (Ninox strenua); southern boobook (Ninox boobook); and eastern barn owl (Tyto javanica). Sites were repeat surveyed at least 16 times throughout the year and occupancy models were developed to establish how season and temperature influence nightly detection probabilities of owls. Key results All three species of owl were detected through playback survey approaches, but the detection probabilities varied greatly between species and across seasons and temperature conditions. Eastern barn owls are poor candidates for playback surveys due to their low detection probabilities. The southern boobook and powerful owl are responsive to playback, but detection probabilities are influenced by season and/or temperature conditions. To optimise survey approaches, southern boobooks should be surveyed during spring and summer and the powerful owl should be surveyed on nights where the minimum temperature is near 20°C. Conclusions Although there is considerable interest in using predators such as owls to monitor biodiversity impacts associated with landscape change, poor detection rates can limit their utility. However, optimising survey approaches that consider shifting detection probabilities under different conditions such as time of year or temperature may improve the utility of predators as surrogates in biodiversity monitoring. Implications Optimising survey approaches for owls considerably reduces the window of opportunity in which to conduct surveys. To counter this, the intensity of survey effort needs to be increased during key periods. The use of highly trained citizen science teams may be one effective way of delivering such an approach.

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