scholarly journals Quality assessment of urban trees using growth visual and chlorophyll fluorescence indicators

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-172
Author(s):  
Peter Uhrin ◽  
Ján Supuka
Keyword(s):  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Mechanical Damage ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Stress Factors ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Acer Pseudoplatanus ◽  
Physiological Indicators ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Adaptation Response ◽  
The City

AbstractUrbanised landscape represents composed structures of technical and biotic elements where social and economy activities create living space for human society but with strongly changed environment. To dominant characters belong climate changes with increased air temperature, drought and emission load, which has developed wide spectrum of stress factors influencing the urban vegetation. For the assessment of plant growth and adaptation response, we have used Sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus L.) as study model woody plant. In the framework of visual characters, we assessed the following indicators: (a) assimilation organs (leaf necrosis); (b) crown quality (degree of foliage and degree of dead tree crown); (c) trunk and branch quality (mechanical damage, incidence of wood destroying fungus and trunk cavities and callus healing of trunk wounds). Each indicator was assessed in five-point scale, and in the end, the common index of quality was calculated. The quality index achieved 9.33 points in the first and 10.33 in the second evaluation periods in the Nitra city and 2.66 at the both assessed periods in the comparable rural park. In the group of physiological indicators, chlorophyll a fluorescence marker and its Fv/Fm parameter were used. Within three repeating assessment during growing season (June, August and September), the average values reached Fv/Fm = 0.814 in the city and Fv/Fm = 0.829 in rural park. The results confirmed statistical significances between loaded city conditions and relatively clean rural locality. Used markers have shown as appropriate tools for growth response measurements of street trees in a changed urban environment.

scholarly journals Assessment of the condition of Balsam poplar trees (Populus balsamifera L.) in a residental area of Bratsk

2021 ◽  
Vol 126 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Elena Runova ◽  
Vasilij Verkhoturov ◽  
Lyudmila Anoshkina ◽  
Ivan Garus
Keyword(s):  
Health Status ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Mechanical Damage ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Populus Balsamifera ◽  
Assessment Data ◽  
Balsam Poplar ◽  
Instrumental Assessment ◽  
Poplar Trees ◽  
The City

In this study, we investigated the health status of balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera L.) trees in a residential area of the city of Bratsk (Irkutsk Oblast, Russia). Visual and instrumental assessment of the health status of pruned and unpruned trees was performed. The identified internal defects in the tree were analyzed with a Resistograph device, which enabled the extent of decayed wood to be determined. Visual analysis revealed various types of damage: dried branches, brittle crowns, frost cracks, mechanical damage, curvature of trunks, decay and inclusions of foreign bodies. We compared trees with and without canopy pruning. We found that pruned trees were significantly more damaged than non-pruned trees. Decomposing wood at different stages of development was found in all the trees studied. A tree passport combining the visual and instrumental assessment data was compiled for each tree. The results of the research were used to formulate conclusions and recommendations for improving the management of urban trees in order to restore their ecological and aesthetic functions.

scholarly journals The Complex Issue of Urban Trees—Stress Factor Accumulation and Ecological Service Possibilities

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 932
Author(s):  
Monika Czaja ◽  
Anna Kołton ◽  
Piotr Muras
Keyword(s):  
Community Involvement ◽  
Growth Conditions ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Stress Factors ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Average Life Expectancy ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
City Structure ◽  
The City

This review paper is the first that summarizes many aspects of the ecological role of trees in urban landscapes while considering their growth conditions. Research Highlights are: (i) Plant growth conditions in cities are worsening due to high urbanization rates and new stress factors; (ii) Urban trees are capable of alleviating the stress factors they are exposed to; (iii) The size and vitality of trees is related to the ecological services they can provide. Our review shows, in a clear way, that the phenomenon of human-related environmental degradation, which generates urban tree stress, can be effectively alleviated by the presence of trees. The first section reviews concerns related to urban environment degradation and its influence on trees. Intense urbanization affects the environment of plants, raising the mortality rate of urban trees. The second part deals with the dieback of city trees, its causes and scale. The average life expectancy of urban trees is relatively low and depends on factors such as the specific location, proper care and community involvement, among others. The third part concerns the ecological and economic advantages of trees in the city structure. Trees affect citizen safety and health, but also improve the soil and air environment. Finally, we present the drawbacks of tree planting and discuss if they are caused by the tree itself or rather by improper tree management. We collect the latest reports on the complicated state of urban trees, presenting new insights on the complex issue of trees situated in cities, struggling with stress factors. These stressors have evolved over the decades and emphasize the importance of tree presence in the city structure.

Verdichten mit «Greening», oder was wir von Singapur lernen können (Essay)

2015 ◽  
Vol 166 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-222
Author(s):  
Urs Gantner
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Botanical Gardens ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Urban Neighbourhoods ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
City State ◽  
Vertical Greening ◽  
The City

Densification by greening, or what we can learn from Singapore (essay) Singapore, a city-state with a high population density, wants to give its population, its tourists and its economy a living and livable city and has developed the concept of the Garden City. Parks, nature reserves, forest, green corridors, trees, botanical gardens, horizontal and vertical greening of buildings, as well as popular participation, are all important for this vision of the city. Singapore is counting on dense construction alongside “greening” and biodiversity. Let us be prepared to learn from Singapore's example! Our land is also a non-renewable resource. To protect our ever more limited agricultural land, we should renounce any extension of building land, and free ourselves from the expanding carpets of suburban development. Let us build multiple urban neighbourhoods with mixed use and more biodiversity. Let us develop new types of communal gardens. Urban gardens in the widest sense – from private gardens to garden cooperatives, to parks and botanical gardens – are a part of our living space. The city should be our garden.

Oosterweel – from an underground and even underwater road infrastructure plan to an urban transformation project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Hellemans
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Flow ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Construction Site ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Road Infrastructure ◽  
Living Space ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

<p>For the coming ten years, the heart of Europe will turn into a gigantic construction site for works on one of the largest hubs of the continent: Antwerp. The Oosterweel Link is the project whereby the motorway ring around Antwerp is undergoing a metamorphosis to reinvigorate traffic flow and add living space to the City. The project had come to a standstill for several years as a result of protests by assertive citizens, but was given a second lease of life following a large-scale participation project.</p><p>To ensure its successful completion, unparalleled efforts are being made in the field and in the area of digitization. It is therefore with good reason that in Belgium the project is referred to as “the construction site of the century”.</p>

scholarly journals As paisagens coexistenciais interespecíficas, ou sobre humanos e não-humanos compartilhando espaços domésticos numa cidade amazônica

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (42) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flávio Leonel Abreu da Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Interspecific Interactions ◽  
Urban Wildlife ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Domestic Cats ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Green Area ◽  
Green Areas ◽  
The City

O artigo propõe uma discussão teórica acerca das paisagens coexistenciais interespecíficas na urbe, voltando-se especialmente à morada humana. Esta é percebida como o lugar da convivência entre humanos e não-humanos – também se considera o seu entorno, onde aparecem os quintais/pomares e os espaços verdes habitados pela fauna silvestre urbana. A coexistência interespecífica contribui para a diversidade na conformação das paisagens citadinas, sendo que as ambiências domésticas – a localidade do espaço habitado/lócus da experiência íntima – permitem a humanos e não-humanos o compartilhamento de uma vida juntos a partir de diferentes formas de interações simbólico-práticas. As áreas verdes revelam-se lugares de interações interespecíficas diversas na urbe, figurando enquanto espaços de contato. Para as reflexões que proponho realizar, parto de minha experiência de coabitação com gatos domésticos e de meu ofício de etnógrafo que pesquisa as relações entre humanos e não-humanos em uma área verde na cidade de Belém (PA) na Amazônia.Palavras-chave: Paisagens. Cidade. Habitat. Animais. Áreas verdes. Interespécies.The Coexistent and Interspecific Landscapes or About Humans and Nonhumans Sharing Domestics Places in an Amazonian City  AbstractThe paper proposes a theoretical discussion about the coexistent and interspecific landscapes at the urbis, regarding, specially, the human shelter. This is perceived as a place of coexistence between humans and nonhumans – its surroundings where there are yards/orchards and green spaces inhabited by urban wildlife is also considered. The interspecific coexistence contributes to the diversity in shaping cityscapes and the domestic ambiences - the location of the living space/locus of intimate experience - allow human and nonhuman sharing a life together, founded on different forms of symbolic and practical interactions. The green areas turn up in places of diverse and interspecific interactions at the urbis, constituting spaces of contact. Aiming at these reflections, I consider my own coexistence experience with domestic cats and my work as an ethnographer who studies the relationships between human and nonhumans in a green area in the city of Belém (PA) in Amazon.Key words: Landscapes. City. Habitat. Animals. Green areas. Interspecies.

Introducing Deliberative Democracy: A Goal, a Tool, or Just a Context?1

Human Affairs ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Primary Interest ◽  
Key Questions

Introducing Deliberative Democracy: A Goal, a Tool, or Just a Context?The concept of deliberative democracy is presented within a wide spectrum of variety of its operationalizations. Since the applicability of the principle of deliberation to the functioning of human society is of the author's primary interest, dilemmas of deliberative democracy related to different problems associated with deliberation in practice are described in some detail. The key questions raised aiming at elucidating the "ontology" of deliberativeness are as follows: is it only a tool for solving the problems of society and politics? Is it a context within which other processes decide on the running of society? Or does it embody a goal of democracy?

scholarly journals The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii: Interim Report

1983 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Ling
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Phase 2 ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
The West ◽  
Phase 3 ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

SummaryA British team has been working since 1978 upon a programme of documentation and analysis in the Insula of the Menander at Pompeii, one of the irregular city-blocks situated immediately to the west of the old part of the city in an area which was developed from the early fourth century B.C onwards. Study of the structural techniques, of wall-abutments, and of anomalies in plan can be used in conjunction with the evidence of painted wall-plaster to identify five main phases in the building-history: Phase I (fourth-third centuries B.C), Phase 2 (second and early first centuries B.C), Phase 3 (c. 80-c. 15 B.C), Phase 4 (c. 15 B.C.-C. A.D. 50), Phase 5 (c. A.D. 50-79). These illustrate a complex pattern of changing property-boundaries, but underline the general trend towards increasing commercialization and greater pressure upon living-space in this area of the city. There is also interesting evidence of the economic basis of life in the individual houses during the years immediately before 79.

scholarly journals The city in Soviet Lithuanian cinema

Menotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilona Vitkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Urban Representations ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Mother Figures ◽  
The City

The article analyzes urban representations of Soviet-era Lithuanian cinema. Like any other object of reality, the city in cinema is a secondary reality, the fruit of artistic interpretation. At the same time, images of the city in film can reflect individual and collective consciousness of the period. The analysis of urban space of Lithuanian feature cinema reveals that cinematographic space can be treated as a composite construct, which creates and represents projections of identities and feelings, reflects demands, ideas, cinema fashions of its time and “hides” real sociocultural and sociopolitical discourses. Most of Soviet-style feature films much easier incorporate countryside spaces, images, landscapes and lifestyle. Meanwhile the city often not only creates an impression of a claustrophobic space, but even looks very decorative. It seems that most of filmmakers can’t identify cities with their own, Lithuanian, national living space. In search of identity or inspiration they turn to idealized village, agrarian culture and its images. Therefore, the city of Soviet Lithuanian cinema is more likely to become a space of collapsed hopes, prison, ideological repressive space, which is stuck between the present and the past. Filmmakers, like their characters, run to the shelter of nature, the mythologized, well-decorated farmstead, where archetypal father and mother figures or a calm, meditative landscape await. It seems that movie characters (and filmmakers), who have escaped from the socialist reality and its challenges to the landscapes of nature and village, have never returned.

scholarly journals Solar Irradiance Reduction Using Optimized Green Infrastructure in Arid Hot Regions: A Case Study in El-Nozha District, Cairo, Egypt

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesam M. Elbardisy ◽  
Mohamed A. Salheen ◽  
Mohammed Fahmy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Heat Island ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Solar Irradiance ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Heat Island ◽  
Physiological Equivalent Temperature ◽  
Urban Climatology ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
The City

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, studies focused on the relationship between urban planning practice and climatology are still lacking, despite the fact that the latter has nearly three decades of literature in the region and the former has much more. However, such an unfounded relationship that would consider urban sustainability measures is a serious challenge, especially considering the effects of climate change. The Greater Cairo Region (GCR) has recently witnessed numerous serious urban vehicular network re-development, leaving the city less green and in need of strategically re-thinking the plan regarding, and the role of, green infrastructure. Therefore, this study focuses on approaches to the optimization of the urban green infrastructure, in order to reduce solar irradiance in the city and, thus, its effects on the urban climatology. This is carried out by studying one of the East Cairo neighborhoods, named El-Nozha district, as a representative case of the most impacted neighborhoods. In an attempt to quantify these effects, using parametric simulation, the Air Temperature (Ta), Mean Radiant Temperature (Tmrt), Relative Humidity (RH), and Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) parameters were calculated before and after introducing urban trees, acting as green infrastructure types that mitigate climate change and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Our results indicate that an optimized percentage, spacing, location, and arrangement of urban tree canopies can reduce the irradiance flux at the ground surface, having positive implications in terms of mitigating the urban heat island effect.

scholarly journals Votive altars: domestic signals to inhabit the Sacred

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Claudio Gambardella ◽  
Valentina Sapio
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Catholic Religion ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

“Sacred” is an Indo-European word meaning “separate”. The Sacred, therefore, [. . . is] a quality that is inherent in that which has relation and contact with powers that man, not being able to dominate, perceives as superior to himself, and as such attributable to a dimension [. . . ] thought however as ”separate” and ”other” with respect to the human world » Galimberti, (2000). The so-called votive altar, autonomous or attached to a major building often present in the Mediterranean countries, belong to the dimension of the Sacred.Votive altars - present in an old neighborhood of peasant origin in the suburbs of Naples called Ponticelli - are almost always placed in the interstices between street and courtyard (a self-built residential typology modeled over time by the inhabitants and which often forms the matrix of many neighborhoods popular Neapolitan). They keep and exhibit little sculptures and drawings of Jesus, Madonnas, and Saints of the Catholic religion, mixed with ancestors portraits and photos of relatives dead of the inhabitants, drawing on the ancient domestic cult of the Romans of Lari and Penati; it is certainly not a consciously cultured reference, but a mysterious ”feeling” that is common among primitive and popular cultures and that unravels through the centuries unscathed. Placed at the entrance of the living space, the altar expresses the sign of a difference, of a territorial change, separates ”ours” from ”yours”, welcomes, does not reject, but marks an open and inclusive threshold.With the paper, we want to study this phenomenon of ”primitive” culture and not regulated by laws, a mix of diffuse sacredness and popular magic, deepening the ”design” aspects of it, building an abacus in which to highlight potential and free references to the visual arts of these ”design works without designers”, and finding out new signs of the Sacred in the City in our time.

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