Assessment of ecological comfort of soils of urban ecosystems under the influence of heavy metals on them

Assessment of the ecological state of environmental components in urban areas plays an important role in achieving environmental safety and environmental comfort for human habitation and economic activities. A comprehensive index of ecological comfort of soils polluted by heavy metals is presented and tested. The index is calculated by the ratio of the total impact of heavy metals (HM) on soils, plants, and soil biota to the sum of indicators of environmental sustainability of soils to this effect and the ability of soils to prevent HM pollution in nearby territories. The scale for ecological regulation and ecological comfort of urban ecosystem soils is proposed. It was noted that 42.8% of the soils of the studied key sites located in the sanitary-protective and recreational zones are environmentally comfortable, while 57.2% of the soils of the industrial, residential and sanitary-protective functional zones of the city are not considered to be ecologically comfortable.

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A text-mining approach to assess impacts and benefits of Nature-Based Solutions

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-14433 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Leydy Alejandra Castellanos Diaz ◽

Pierre Antoine Versini ◽

Ioulia Tchiguirinskaia ◽

Olivier Bonin

Keyword(s):

Text Mining ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Graphical Representation ◽

Visual Representation ◽

Economic Valuation ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Research Database ◽

Trade Offs

Worldwide, research community has studied the benefits of green and blue spaces implementation in urban areas, generating a great amount of literature regarding this topic. Since these solutions are of interest to face climate change impacts in cities, the European Commission (EC) has funded several projects to make an extensive review of the available literature. Three of these projects were especially studied here, namely EKLIPSE, Mapping Assessment of Ecosystem and their Services- Urban Ecosystem (MAES: Urban Ecosystems), and NATure-based URban innoVATION (NATURVATION). They all aim to identify the physical and social impacts, benefits and trade-offs of Nature-Based Solutions (NbS).To objectively compare findings presented in the deliverable reports, a text-mining approach was carried out. This methodology coupled with a data visual representation allowed to convert the EC projects reports (corpus) into a meaningful structured analysis. As a result, a graphical representation was created, making possible to recognize concepts, patterns and attributes addressed by each text, as well as stakeholders and their position with respect to the topic.&#160;The text mining analysis was implemented through Gargantex Blue Jasmine Version (an open source software developed by ISC-PIF). Gargantex results permitted to recover a list of key-terms from each corpus based in their co-occurrence in the whole text. These terms were used to elaborate a visual representation or network, placing the words strongly related close to each other and characterizing the obtained clusters by a similar color.This approach underlined the specific focus of each project: the conciliation between urbanisation and urban ecosystems (MAES), or the economic valuation and monetisation of NbS (NATURVATION) for instance. Moreover, it demonstrated that despite the different literature review methodologies of each report/project, there are some common trends exhibited by the obtained graphical networks and their statistical attributes. For instance, the need to assess the NbS performance with some adapted indicators; and the important EC supporting role in the implementation of NbS. Similarly, some regulating (e.g. water quality or temperature reduction) and cultural (e.g. recreation or health benefits) services are more addressed. &#160;This analysis can be applied to all kind of corpus, which makes it easy to understand different and similar concepts and approaches of a set of text data. A text-mining analysis can be conducted over the direct references of NbS benefits, on a collection of publications of a research database like Scopus or Science Direct.&#160;

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

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13169182 ◽

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.

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Urban Ecosystem: An Interaction of Biological and Physical Components

10.5772/intechopen.97742 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hassanali Mollashahi ◽

Magdalena Szymura

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Urban Space ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Driving Force ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Public Health Officials ◽

Physical Components

Urban ecosystems are composed of biological components (plants, animals, microorganisms, and other forms of life) and physical components (soil, water, air, climate, and topography) which interact together. In terms of “Urban Green infrastructure (UGI)”, these components are in a combination of natural and constructed materials of urban space that have an important role in metabolic processes, biodiversity, and ecosystem resiliency underlying valuable ecosystem services. The increase in the world’s population in urban areas is a driving force to threat the environmental resources and public health in cities; thus, the necessity to adopt sustainable practices for communities are crucial for improving and maintaining urban environmental health. This chapter emphasizes the most important issues associated with urban ecosystem, highlighting the recent findings as a guide for future UGI management, which can support city planners, public health officials, and architectural designers to quantify cities more responsive, safer places for people.

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Evaluation of respiratory activity of albic luvisol contaminated by zinc and nickel during spring rapeseed cultivation

Ratarstvo i povrtarstvo ◽

10.5937/ratpov57-27018 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 57 (3) ◽

pp. 68-71

Author(s):

Miljan Samardžić ◽

Irina Andreeva ◽

Zoran Galić ◽

Jovica Vasin

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metals ◽

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Respiratory Activity ◽

Dose Range ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Biological Indicators ◽

Anthropogenic Pressure ◽

Strong Positive Correlation ◽

Almost All

In almost all industrially developed regions of the Russian Federation, the soil is contaminated with heavy metals (HM) often in concentrations which exceed limits of safety. This contamination causes degradation of agricultural land, which underlines the importance of the complex continuous monitoring of the dynamics of on-going changes in urban ecosystems against the background of natural processes. Quantitative assessment of the environmental sustainability of the soil according to the biological indicators of its condition is of enormous importance, in particular the balance of microbial carbon in soils, which are under varying degrees of anthropogenic pressure. Experiments were carried out to determine the phytoremediation potential of the spring rapeseed plants on soil contaminated with heavy metals. The aim of the study was to assess the respiratory activity of albic luvisol at different levels of its contamination with zinc and nickel under the conditions of a growing experiment with spring rapeseed plants. The experimental data on the respiratory activity of soil artificially contaminated with zinc and nickel in the dose range of 400-800 and 30-60 mg kg-1 of soil respectively, showed that microbial activity had a strong positive correlation with the presence of spring rapeseed plants in the vessels and weak correlation on the presence of toxic elements in the soil. According to the respiratory activity of albic luvisol, it was found that in the first 13 days of vegetation, cultivation of spring rapeseed plants had a positive effect on the sustainability of soil microbiocenosis to complex pollution with zinc and nickel.

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Особливості біоакумуляції важких металів деревною рослинністю в зоні локальної дії Черкаської теплоелектроцентралі (на прикладі м. Черкаси)

Ukrainian Journal of Ecology ◽

10.15421/2018_298 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 953-960

Author(s):

N.M. Kornelyuk ◽

O.M. Khomenko

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metals ◽

Thermal Power ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Urban Transport ◽

Bioindicator Species ◽

Accumulation Coefficient ◽

Industrial Sites ◽

Mobile Forms ◽

Functional Zones ◽

The City

Woody plants are able not only to absorb metals of anthropogenic origin, but also to deposit their significant quantities in wood, leaves, and thereby temporarily remove them from the cycle of substances of urban ecosystems. The paper compares the content of heavy metals – Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd in the leaves of the bioindicator species Pоpulus рyramidalis Roz and their mobile forms in soils collected from 6 test locations from various functional zones of the Southern industrial district of the City of the Cherkassy. Soil-geochemical associations of Cu, Zn, Pb and Cd content in the investigated locations indicate that the main source of Zn, Cu is the emissions of of the Cherkassy thermal power plant, and Pb, Cd – of urban transport. According to the total accumulation in the leaves of P. pyramidalis. The heavy metals are located as follows: Pb> Cd> Cu> Zn. It was established that the content of mobile forms of Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd in the soils of the experimental sites was several times higher than background values, and the coefficient of biological accumulation in the leaves fluctuated in insignificant limits. According to the results of indicators of the accumulation coefficient, the leaves of P. pyramidalis have low bioavailability in Cu and Zn, and the availability of Pb and Cd approaches the average. The obtained data can be used for the creation and reconstruction of green plantings of urban transport highways, sanitary protection zones of industrial sites of enterprises, recreational areas, squares.

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Drivers of avian species richness and community structure in urban courtyard gardens

Journal of Urban Ecology ◽

10.1093/jue/juz026 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Alessandro Pirzio Biroli ◽

Benjamin M Van Doren ◽

Ada Grabowska-Zhang

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Community Structure ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Species Turnover ◽

Model Averaging ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Avian Species ◽

Theoretic Approach ◽

Ecosystem Research

Abstract Increasing global urbanisation has steered research towards understanding biodiversity in urban areas. Old city spaces throughout Europe have a proliferation of urban court gardens, which can create a mosaic of habitat pockets in an urban area. This article examines the patterns and drivers of avian species richness and community structure in 20 gardens of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. We conducted morning surveys across 7 weeks in May and June 2017 and used an information-theoretic approach and model averaging to identify important habitat predictors of species richness. We also studied community structure with Sorensen indices and non-metric multi-dimensional analysis. A total of 43 avian species were observed across all sites. Our sites generally differed in their avian assemblages, with greater species turnover than nestedness between sites. Site area was the strongest predictor of site species richness and surrounding habitat composition was the dominant driver of community structure. Thus, the largest gardens were the most species rich, but species composition among gardens differed based on the habitats in which they were embedded. We support using island biogeography theory to understand the avian species assemblages of urban ecosystems and stress the suitability of our study sites for future urban ecosystem research and generating wildlife awareness.

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PROBLEMATICS AND LEGAL DIMENSIONS IN ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE ACCORDING TO LAW NUMBER 26 OF 2007

Indonesian Journal of Law and Policy Studies ◽

10.31000/ijlp.v1i2.2781 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 106

Author(s):

Amiludin Amiludin ◽

Muhammad Asmawi

Keyword(s):

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Spatial Planning ◽

Open Space ◽

Secondary Data ◽

Legal Analysis ◽

Cultural Issues ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Conservation Area ◽

The Government

The writing of this article starts from the problems that exist in the development situation in each region, especially in spatial planning, almost certainly has the same problem, such as the absence of consistent and strict licensing in development. Such as floods that occurred in urban areas of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi due to the development of the city. It is increasing the number of population, activities, and land requirements both for settlements and economic activities so that there is a change of function that should be used as a conservation area and green open space has turned into a residential area. This research uses the normative legal research method or discusses this problem more to the study of literature or secondary data. The normative legal analysis includes research on constitutional principles, research on legal systematics, research on the degree of vertical and horizontal synchronization, comparison of law, and history of law. Law enforcement on sustainable spatial planning is a very complex phenomenon with various approaches, both legal, social, political, economic and cultural issues so that for the benefit of the community, the interests of the government as well as the harmony of spatial planning, environmental sustainability needs supporting capacity of the environment and resources nature is included in the case of sustainable development.

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INTENSITY OF SOIL CONTAMINATION IN INDUSTRIAL CENTERS OF KAZAKHSTAN

CBU International Conference Proceedings ◽

10.12955/cbup.v1.60 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 374-380 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Amanzhol Iztileu ◽

Olga Grebeneva ◽

Maral Otarbayeva ◽

Nina Zhanbasinova ◽

Ekaterina Ivashina ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metals ◽

Soil Contamination ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Pollution Index ◽

Environmental Safety ◽

Health Issues ◽

Gis Technology ◽

Manganese Zinc ◽

Software Product ◽

Mutagenic Effects

For Kazakhstan, with its vast territory, the problem of disposal of solid waste from metallurgical, energy and petrochemical industries is becoming more acute. Failure to comply with hygiene requirements for the placement and operation of landfills increases the area of contaminated land and could become a threat to the public of environmental safety of industrial centers. The aim of the study was to evaluate the soil contamination in the towns and cities of Kazakhstan and the allocation of areas of risk to public health. The content of heavy metals in the soil (manganese, zinc, copper, cobalt, nickel, lead, cadmium, mercury, selenium, tin, arsenic, vanadium) were determined by atomic absorption spectrometer MGA-915M. Evaluation of the results was performed with respect to the MPC substances in the soil, the toxicity of the components. Summarized metal soil pollution index (IZ) was obtained by the sum of the rate of excess metal concentration above the level of its world-Clark. To assess the different risk residence zones scale with 5 levels of purity up to 2 - very clean, 2.8 net, 8-16 acceptable, 16-32 moderately dangerous, dangerous 32-128 was chosen. We developed the original software product using GIS technology to provide environmental information on an electronic map of the city in the form of color patches (polygons), matching levels summarized indicator of soil contamination. Found that the most contaminated soil were village Glubokoe where pollution reached dangerous or extremely dangerous levels, Aktau and Zhanaozen in which moderately hazardous contamination was detected throughout; Ust-Kamenogorsk and village Sholakkorgan where moderately hazardous contamination was noted in the fourth part of the urban area. The most common heavy metal toxicity 1-2 class that exceeded MCL in soils, were lead, copper and zinc, and in village Glubokoe - chromium and arsenic, in Aktau - cadmium. Visualization of environmental pollution in some urban areas puts into the hands of environmentalists a new tool in the analysis of environmental health issues to reduce the carcinogenic and mutagenic effects of soil contamination with heavy metals. The mapping results of soil contamination will contribute earmarking local authorities to carry out administrative measures to optimize the environment in the industrial centers.

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Differentiation of Trace Metal Contamination Level between Different Urban Functional Zones in Permafrost Affected Soils (the Example of Several Cities in the Yamal Region, Russian Arctic)

Minerals ◽

10.3390/min11070668 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (7) ◽

pp. 668

Author(s):

Timur Nizamutdinov ◽

Eugenia Morgun ◽

Alexandr Pechkin ◽

Jakub Kostecki ◽

Andrzej Greinert ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metals ◽

Urban Areas ◽

The Arctic ◽

Contamination Level ◽

Anthropogenic Pressure ◽

Pi Index ◽

Functional Zones ◽

Accumulation Of Metals ◽

High Level ◽

Sandy Sediments

Dynamically developing urbanization causes a number of environmental effects, including those related to the chemical transformation of soils. Relatively less information about the urban areas of the Arctic and Subarctic zones, constructed mostly on permafrost and intensively populated areas can be found. By the example of the analysis of basic soil properties and concentrations of trace metals in the soils of the cities of Salekhard, Urengoy, Nadym, Novy Urengoy and Gaz Sale (the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District), as well as various functional zones within the cities, the relationship between the age of the cities, the level of anthropogenic pressure and the type of parent materials and the character of accumulation of metals in the soil profile of urban soils have been described. The direct correlation was found between the content of Pb, Cr, Ni, As and soil sorption characteristics. In young cities built on sandy sediments, there is less accumulation of heavy metals in the topsoil horizons. Relatively higher concentrations of Cu and Cd were noted in soils of industrialized cities, regardless of functional zones. The higher content of Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As and Pb has been registered in older zones also frequently used for residential purposes. The calculated values of the PI index for some functional zones of young cities show the medium and high content of heavy metals. The analysis of Igeo and PLI indices shows a large diversity both in relation to individual cities and their functional zones. Soil quality, in spite of the high level of anthropogenic load, was assessed as mostly satisfactory.

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The Contribution of Riparian Zone on Urban Ecosystems through Climate Change Urban Adaptation Process

10.52460/issc.2021.049 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hande Gündel ◽

Ayşe Kalaycı Önaç

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Social Life ◽

Riparian Zone ◽

Social Activity ◽

Urban Ecosystems ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Urban Life ◽

Urban Habitat ◽

The City

The riparian zone plays a crucial role in the development and transformation of cities. This zone dramatically changes cities both ecologically and economically and is one of the cornerstones of the future scenarios of the city. These areas constitute significant emphasis throughout the city by providing wildlife, improving the water quality, reducing flood areas, and creating social activity areas in the city. Besides, it influences land use, transportation, energy efficiency, social life. The riparian zones are one of the most significant components of the cities that mitigate the climate change effects. Because, the existence of water creates microclimatic conditions around the cities and this conserves the heat island effect, greenhouse effect, and also air pollution. The deterioration of the sustainability of this important backbone throughout the city causes an important loss in terms of urban ecosystems. Because it is an important connection of natural life and urban life, and any deterioration causes two important characters to be separated from one another. In this regard, ensuring water management in the city is a crucial issue in terms of urban habitat. In the scope of this study, research was conducted on the contribution of riparian zone to the urban ecosystem and also how the presence of this backbone system in the city transforms the urban areas was discussed.

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