In terms of the process of air purification, a lot of attention has been devoted to trees and shrubs. Little attention has been paid to herbaceous vegetation from the lower forest layers. Urban forests are often located on the outskirts of cities and surround exit roads where there is heavy traffic, generating particulate matter (PM) pollution. The aim of this study was to investigate the spread of PM from the road traffic in the air and to investigate how individual layers of urban forests accumulate PM. We conducted comparative analyses of PM accumulation on plants in five zones away from the road, into the forest, in the air, and in four vegetation layers: mosses, herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees. The results show that all forest layers accumulate PM. We show that PM is very efficiently accumulated by herbaceous plants growing along roadsides, and that the PM that was not deposited on herbaceous plants was accumulated by trees and shrubs. With increasing distance from the road into the forest, the PM content on herbaceous plants decreased and the accumulation on trees and shrubs increased. We estimated that PM concentration in the air dropped significantly in the front line of the trees, but it was still detectable up to 50 m into the forest. The results presented herein show that meadow vegetation and urban forests play a very important role in air purification. Our results provide a better understanding of the complexity of urban forest interactions and provide the basis for better planning of urban greenery.
The paper presents results of questionnaire research conducted to determine social preferences regarding leisure in Warsaw municipal forests (WMF) (Poland). The preferences pertained to frequency of visits and willingness to pay for recreational infrastructure in a forest depending on its appearance, level of development, and the respondent’s income. The data were processed using statistical analysis (ANOVA Friedman test, U Mann–Whitney test, logistic regression). The results show that the higher the development level of a forest, the more often young people choose it for leisure. Willingness to pay for a forest depends on its development level, with respondents more willing to fund forests with a higher development level. No such correlation with the respondents’ income was found. Preferences regarding the selection of a specific type of forest for leisure were dependent on per capita income of the respondents only in the case of forests at a lower level of development. A forest’s preference level affected the willingness to pay for it and varied depending on the development level.
The process of forest fragmentation has been observed in many countries, where plant species had adapt to different habitats, such as for example manor parks and rural plantings. A number of scientists have studied the parks as sites where waning environments and landscapes find their shelter. In 2011-2012, research was undertaken on diversity of vegetation in afforestations of parks, rural plantings and oak-hornbeam forests in Sandomierz Basin. In order to compare the means obtained univariate analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) was used with juxtaposing divided by each of the two criteria: size (the small, and large parks) and conservation(cultivated parks and nonclutivated parks). Tukey's test was used to examine the significance of differences between respective groups. Analyses were with STATISTICA 9.1. software. Plants classified as forest species, grassland species and those of synanthropic communities were observed in all the afforestations. The parks with high wooded and not mowed areas and oak-hornbeam forests were more forest-like than other types of afforestations studied.
Directions for landscape protection and planning. Problems of maintaining remnants of natural ecosystems in urbanized areas, planning of systems of natural areas in cities and ways of natural evaluation for these purposes, in order to improve environmental conditions for inhabitants, are very current. The aim of the paper is the presentation of methodical approach to natural evaluation of landscape and formulating recommended guidelines for landscape protection and planning in the urban study area including the Bielański Forest nature reserve and its surroundings. The presented method of landscape evaluation consists on: division of the study area into spatial-landscape units characterized with relatively similar type of landscape, analyses in units’ areas and external preconditions, selection of suitable criteria of natural evaluation determining the way of estimation – the range of points awarded in each criterion (points bonitation) and interpretation of results. The guidelines for landscape protection and planning have been formulated, among others maintaining and improving of three external ecological corridors.
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