Assessing the Ecological Value of an Urban Forest Park: A Case Study of Sinhua Forest Park in Taiwan

Urban forests offer multiple functions: they can balance negative effects from the environment and provide the public with a place for leisure and recreation. Hence, urban forests are crucial to urban ecology and have been widely studied. In addition, relevant study results were applied for policymaking in urban development and forest park management. This study evaluated the ecological value of the Sinhua Forest Park and examined whether the socioeconomic background of participants influences their willingness to pay (WTP) for ecological conservation. Questionnaires were distributed to visitors in the Sinhua Forest Park in Tainan, Taiwan, and the payment card format of the contingent valuation method was employed to evaluate the ecological value. The results showed that the visitors had an annual WTP of $22.01 per person. However, when samples with protest responses were excluded, the WTP rose to $24.58. By considering the total number of visitors of a year, the total ecological value was $1,426,964.14/year and reached $1,593,257.31/year after excluding the protest samples. This study also analyzed participants’ within-variable socioeconomic background (e.g., gender and education) and discovered that male participants who are aged 60 years or older, with an education level of senior/vocational high school, and those who visited green spaces two to three times per week presented a high WTP score on average. A Tobit regression model was employed for examination, and the results indicated that participants’ education and frequency of visiting green spaces significantly influenced their WTP for the ecological conservation of the Sinhua Forest Park.

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

10.7287/peerj.preprints.3424 ◽

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.

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PROBLEMS OF DEFINING A LEGAL STATUS OF URBAN FORESTS IN RUSSIA

Proceedings of Southwest State University ◽

10.21869/2223-1560-2017-21-2-190-197 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 190-197

Author(s):

O. A. Lavrischeva

Keyword(s):

Russian Federation ◽

Legal Status ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Legal Regulation ◽

Forest Park ◽

Territorial Planning ◽

The Russian Federation ◽

Constitutional Right ◽

Forest Parks

The paper considers norms of the Russian legislation on urban forests. The main problems of the legal regulation of urban forests within the Russian Federation have been identified and analyzed. The author pays special attention to the absence of a definition of the "urban forests" concept and the criteria for referring forest plantations to urban forests that make it possible to delineate urban forests from other plantations within the settlements, including forest parks. The author points to the fact that there is no criteria for power delineation to protect and use urban forests as well as a clear functional structure of urban forest management at the level of the subjects of the Russian Federation. There is also legal uncertainty about referring forest located in settlements that are not cities to forests. All these gaps in the Russian legislation cause certain difficulties in law enforcement practice. Based on the analysis, the author suggests ways of managing urban forests in the current socio-economic situation in Russia. First of all, it is necessary to introduce a number of clarifications at the legislative level: to regulate the legal regime for using urban forests established for forest park areas in accordance with the requirements of the Russian Federation Code, to establish the norm which will oblige local authorities while preparing and approving the documents concerning territorial planning, to include land plots on which urban forests are located, into recreational areas or zones of specially protected areas. The author believes that these changes in the forest legislation will help to develop and preserve urban forests as a reliable environmental and legal guarantee for the constitutional right of citizens to have a favorable environment.

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The Accuracy Validation of FireFACE Software in Analyzing Facial Expressions of Urban Forest Visitors

10.20944/preprints202010.0265.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hongxu Wei ◽

Ping Liu

Keyword(s):

Facial Expression ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Well Being ◽

Forest Park ◽

Shenyang City ◽

Validation Test ◽

Tree Population ◽

The Difference

The construction of sustainable urban forests follows the principle that well-being in people is promoted when exposed to tree population. Facial expression is the direct representation of inner emotion that can be used to assess real-time perception in urban forests. The emergence and change of facial expressions for forest visitors are in an implicit process. The reserved character of oriental races strengthens the requirement for the accuracy to recognize expressions through instrument rating. In this study, a dataset was established with 2,886 randomly photographed faces from visitors in a constructed urban forest park and a promenade at summertime in Shenyang City at Northeast China. Six experts were invited to choose 160 photos in total with 20 images representing one of eight typical expressions as angry, contempt, disgusted, happy, neutral, sad, scared, and surprised emotions. The FireFACE ver. 3.0 software was used to test hit-ratio validation as the accuracy (ac.) to match machine-recognized photos with those identified by experts. According to Kruskal-Wallis test on the difference from averaged scores in 20 recently published papers, contempt (ac.=0.40%, P=0.0038) and scared (ac.=25.23%, P=0.0018) expressions cannot pass the validation test. Therefore, the FireFACE can be used as an instrument to analyze facial expression from oriental people in urban forests but contempt and scared expressions cannot be identified.

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Spatiotemporal Ozone Level Variation in Urban Forests in Shenzhen, China

10.20944/preprints201903.0019.v1 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Wenjun Duan ◽

Cheng Wang ◽

Nancai Pei ◽

Chang Zhang ◽

Lin Gu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Ambient Air ◽

Quality Standard ◽

Daily Maximum ◽

Ozone Level ◽

Night Time ◽

Recreational Activities ◽

Forest Park

Abstract: Research Highlights: This study is among the first to investigate ozone levels in urban forests in China. It establishes that urban forest air quality in Yuanshan Forest Park, Shenzhen, is suitable for recreational activities and identifies spatial, seasonal, and diurnal O3 patterns and relationships with micrometeorological parameters, suggesting the possibility of manipulating relevant forest characteristics to reduce O3 levels. Background and Objectives: An understanding of O3 levels of urban forest environments is needed to assess potential effects on human health and recreational activities. Such studies in China are scarce. This study investigated urban forest O3 levels to improve understanding and support residents engaging in forest recreational activities. Materials and Methods: We monitored O3 levels in 2015–2016 for three urban forests representing common habitats (foothill, valley, and ridge) in Yuanshan Forest Park, Shenzhen, and for an adjacent square. Results: The overall mean daily and daily maximum 8-h mean (MDA8) O3 concentrations were highest for the ridge forest and lowest for the valley forest. Each forest’s O3 concentrations were highest in summer. Diurnally, forest O3 concentrations peaked between 13:00 and 17:00 and reached a minimum between 03:00 and 09:00. The correlation between forest O3 concentrations and air temperature (AT) was strongly positive in summer and autumn but negative in spring. In each season, O3 concentration was negatively correlated with relative humidity (RH). No MDA8 or hourly O3 concentrations in the forests exceeded National Ambient Air Quality Standard Grade I thresholds (100 and 160 μg m−3, respectively). Conclusions: O3 accumulation is present in ridge urban forest in all seasons. Foothill and valley urban forests have better air quality than ridge forestation. Urban forest air quality is better in spring and autumn than in summer and is better from night-time to early morning than from noon to afternoon.

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

10.7287/peerj.preprints.3424v1 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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

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Facial expressions of Asian people exposed to constructed urban forests: Accuracy validation and variation assessment

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0253141 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (6) ◽

pp. e0253141

Author(s):

Haoming Guan ◽

Hongxu Wei ◽

Richard J. Hauer ◽

Ping Liu

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Positive Emotions ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Well Being ◽

Forest Park ◽

Accuracy Measurement ◽

The Difference ◽

Variation Assessment ◽

Asian People

An outcome of building sustainable urban forests is that people’s well-being is improved when they are exposed to trees. Facial expressions directly represents one’s inner emotions, and can be used to assess real-time perception. The emergence and change in the facial expressions of forest visitors are an implicit process. As such, the reserved character of Asians requires an instrument rating to accurately recognize expressions. In this study, a dataset was established with 2,886 randomly photographed faces from visitors at a constructed urban forest park and at a promenade during summertime in Shenyang City, Northeast China. Six experts were invited to choose 160 photos in total with 20 images representing one of eight typical expressions: angry, contempt, disgusted, happy, neutral, sad, scared, and surprised. The FireFACE ver. 3.0 software was used to test hit-ratio validation as an accuracy measurement (ac.) to match machine-recognized photos with those identified by experts. According to the Kruskal-Wallis test on the difference from averaged scores in 20 recently published papers, contempt (ac. = 0.40%, P = 0.0038) and scared (ac. = 25.23%, P = 0.0018) expressions do not pass the validation test. Both happy and sad expression scores were higher in forests than in promenades, but there were no difference in net positive response (happy minus sad) between locations. Men had a higher happy score but lower disgusted score in forests than in promenades. Men also had a higher angry score in forests. We conclude that FireFACE can be used for analyzing facial expressions in Asian people within urban forests. Women are encouraged to visit urban forests rather than promenades to elicit more positive emotions.

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Spatiotemporal Ozone Level Variation in Urban Forests in Shenzhen, China

Forests ◽

10.3390/f10030247 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 247 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Wenjun Duan ◽

Cheng Wang ◽

Nancai Pei ◽

Chang Zhang ◽

Lin Gu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Surface Ozone ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Ambient Air ◽

Daily Maximum ◽

Ozone Level ◽

Night Time ◽

Recreational Activities ◽

Forest Park

This study is among the first to investigate ozone levels in urban forests in China. It establishes that urban forest air quality in Yuanshan Forest Park (Shenzhen) is suitable for recreational activities and identifies spatial, seasonal, and diurnal O3 patterns and relationships with micrometeorological parameters, suggesting the possibility of manipulating relevant forest characteristics to reduce Surface ozone (O3) levels. An understanding of O3 levels of urban forest environments is needed to assess potential effects on human health and recreational activities. Such studies in China are scarce. This study investigated urban forest O3 levels to improve understanding and support residents engaging in forest recreational activities. We monitored O3 levels in 2015–2016 for three urban forests representing common habitats (foothill, valley, and ridge) in Yuanshan Forest Park and for an adjacent square. The overall mean daily and daily maximum 8 h mean (MDA8) O3 concentrations were highest for the ridge forest and lowest for the valley forest. Each forest’s O3 concentrations were highest in summer. Diurnally, forest O3 concentrations peaked between 13:00 and 17:00 and reached a minimum between 03:00 and 09:00. The correlation between forest O3 concentrations and air temperature (AT) was strongly positive in summer and autumn but negative in spring. In each season, O3 concentration was negatively correlated with relative humidity (RH). No MDA8 or hourly O3 concentrations in the forests exceeded National Ambient Air Quality Standard Grade I thresholds (100 and 160 μg m−3, respectively). O3 accumulation is present in ridge urban forest in all seasons. Foothill and valley urban forests have better air quality than ridge forestation. Urban forest air quality is better in spring and autumn than in summer and is better from night-time to early morning than from noon to afternoon.

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Mainstreaming Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in Peri-Urban Forest Park Creation: Experience From Eastern Europe

Frontiers in Environmental Science ◽

10.3389/fenvs.2021.618217 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Eliana Sevianu ◽

Cristian Valeriu Maloş ◽

Viorel Arghiuş ◽

Nicoleta Brişan ◽

Alexandru Sabin Bǎdǎrǎu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Green Spaces ◽

Public Consultation ◽

The Public ◽

Implementation Team ◽

The Social ◽

The City

The social role of peri-urban forests is diversifying, and this implies that peri-urban forests are redesigned to meet and shape social demands. A key challenge is the integration of the social demands for green spaces with the maintenance of key ecosystem structures and processes as well as the biodiversity of the green spaces. In this study, we report our experience and insights gathered through the implementation of a project targeting a peri-urban forest development near the city of Cluj-Napoca. One key particularity of the project was that it was designed by the city hall in cooperation with a major NGO, and the academic sector joined the project in its second stage, with the aim of mainstreaming ecosystem services and biodiversity within a well-established design concept. After comprehensively assessing the biodiversity and ecosystem services of the targeted forest, we found that the ecosystem supply was strongly related to the tree stand structure and the forestry management from the past decades. The public expressed concerns related to the parts of the established development design, which included built structures, artificial lights, toilets, and paved roads, perceiving that these actions will negatively influence the natural environment. We present the modifications undertaken in the project design after the public consultation and deliberation within the implementation team. An anonymous internal evaluation of the implementation team shows appreciation for the human and professional interactions and the resulting innovation and learning opportunities. To improve interdisciplinary collaborations, there is a need for a good institutional support and financial reward, transparency, and good communication within the team. At the end of the “Discussion” section, we present the insights gathered from this interdisciplinary experience in order to guide further similar projects in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Income Diversification and Bank Efficiency in Vietnam

Journal of Economics and Development ◽

10.33301/jed.2017.19.03.04 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 52-67

Author(s):

Sang Nguyen Minh

Keyword(s):

Regression Model ◽

Commercial Banks ◽

Banking System ◽

Operational Efficiency ◽

Commercial Banking ◽

Tobit Regression ◽

Income Diversification ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Study Results ◽

The Impact

This study uses the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method to estimate the technical efficiency index of 34 Vietnamese commercial banks in the period 2007-2015, and then it analyzes the impact of income diversification on the operational efficiency of Vietnamese commercial banks through a censored regression model - the Tobit regression model. Research results indicate that income diversification has positive effects on the operational efficiency of Vietnamese commercial banks in the research period. Based on study results, in this research some recommendations forpolicy are given to enhance the operational efficiency of Vietnam’s commercial banking system.

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Quantifying Tree Cover Loss in Urban Forests within Nairobi City Metropolitan Area from Earth Observation Data

Environmental Sciences Proceedings ◽

10.3390/iecf2020-07952 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 78

Author(s):

Francis Oloo ◽

Godwin Murithi ◽

Charlynne Jepkosgei

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Metropolitan Area ◽

Land Surface ◽

Urban Forest ◽

Urban Forests ◽

Earth Observation ◽

Tree Cover ◽

Observation Data ◽

Vegetation Health ◽

Earth Observation Data

Urban forests contribute significantly to the ecological integrity of urban areas and the quality of life of urban dwellers through air quality control, energy conservation, improving urban hydrology, and regulation of land surface temperatures (LST). However, urban forests are under threat due to human activities, natural calamities, and bioinvasion continually decimating forest cover. Few studies have used fine-scaled Earth observation data to understand the dynamics of tree cover loss in urban forests and the sustainability of such forests in the face of increasing urban population. The aim of this work was to quantify the spatial and temporal changes in urban forest characteristics and to assess the potential drivers of such changes. We used data on tree cover, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and land cover change to quantify tree cover loss and changes in vegetation health in urban forests within the Nairobi metropolitan area in Kenya. We also used land cover data to visualize the potential link between tree cover loss and changes in land use characteristics. From approximately 6600 hectares (ha) of forest land, 720 ha have been lost between 2000 and 2019, representing about 11% loss in 20 years. In six of the urban forests, the trend of loss was positive, indicating a continuing disturbance of urban forests around Nairobi. Conversely, there was a negative trend in the annual mean NDVI values for each of the forests, indicating a potential deterioration of the vegetation health in the forests. A preliminary, visual inspection of high-resolution imagery in sample areas of tree cover loss showed that the main drivers of loss are the conversion of forest lands to residential areas and farmlands, implementation of big infrastructure projects that pass through the forests, and extraction of timber and other resources to support urban developments. The outcome of this study reveals the value of Earth observation data in monitoring urban forest resources.

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