Urban areas' population has grown during the last century and it is expected that over 60% of the world population will live in cities by 2050. Urban parks provide several ecosystem services that are valuable to the well-being of city-dwellers and they are also considered a nature-based solution to tackle multiple environmental problems in cities. However, the type and amount of ecosystem services provided will vary with each park vegetation type, even within same the park. Our main goal was to quantify the trade-offs in ecosystem services associated to different vegetation types, using a spatially detailed approach. Rather than relying solely on general vegetation typologies, we took a more ecologically oriented approach, by explicitly considering different units of vegetation structure and composition. This was demonstrated in a large park (44ha) located in the city of Almada (Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal), where six vegetation units were mapped in detail and six ecosystem services were evaluated: carbon sequestration, seed dispersal, erosion prevention, water purification, air purification and habitat quality. The results showed that, when looking at the park in detail, some ecosystem services varied greatly with vegetation type. Carbon sequestration was positively influenced by tree density, independently of species composition. Seed dispersal potential was higher in lawns, and mixed forest provided the highest amount of habitat quality. Air purification service was slightly higher in mixed forest, but was high in all vegetation types, probably due to low background pollution, and both water purification and erosion prevention were high in all vegetation types. Knowing the type, location, and amount of ecosystem services provided by each vegetation type can help to improve management options based on ecosystem services trade-offs and looking for win-win situations. The trade-offs are, for example, very clear for carbon: tree planting will boost carbon sequestration regardless of species, but may not be enough to increase habitat quality. Moreover, it may also negatively influence seed dispersal service. Informed practitioners can use this ecological knowledge to promote the role of urban parks as a nature-based solution to provide multiple ecosystem services, and ultimately improve the design and management of the green infrastructure. This will also improve the science of Ecosystem Services, acknowledging that the type of vegetation matters for the provision of ecosystem services and trade-offs analysis.
The growing human population concentrated in urban areas lead to the increase of road traffic and artificial areas, consequently enhancing air pollution and urban heat island effects, among others. These environmental changes affect citizen's health, causing a high number of premature deaths, with considerable social and economic costs. Nature-based solutions are essential to ameliorate those impacts in urban areas. While the mere presence of urban green spaces is pointed as an overarching solution, the relative importance of specific vegetation structure, composition and management to improve the ecosystem services of air purification and climate regulation are overlooked. This avoids the establishment of optimized planning and management procedures for urban green spaces with high spatial resolution and detail. Our aim was to understand the relative contribution of vegetation structure, composition and management for the provision of ecosystem services of air purification and climate regulation in urban green spaces, in particular the case of urban parks. This work was done in a large urban park with different types of vegetation surrounded by urban areas. As indicators of microclimatic effects and of air pollution levels we selected different metrics: lichen diversity and pollutants accumulation in lichens. Among lichen diversity, functional traits related to nutrient and water requirements were used as surrogates of the capacity of vegetation to filter air pollution and to regulate climate, and provide air purification and climate regulation ecosystem services, respectively. This was also obtained with very high spatial resolution which allows detailed spatial planning for optimization of ecosystem services. We found that vegetation type characterized by a more complex structure (trees, shrubs and herbaceous layers) and by the absence of management (pruning, irrigation and fertilization) had a higher capacity to provide the ecosystems services of air purification and climate regulation. By contrast, lawns, which have a less complex structure and are highly managed, were associated to a lower capacity to provide these services. Tree plantations showed an intermediate effect between the other two types of vegetation. Thus, vegetation structure, composition and management are important to optimize green spaces capacity to purify air and regulate climate. Taking this into account green spaces can be managed at high spatial resolutions to optimize these ecosystem services in urban areas and contribute to improve human well-being.
The simple model of Eurocode 3, for the fire resistance evaluation of stainless steel members, are based on the procedures used for carbon steel structural elements. However, due to the existing differences in the constitutive laws of these two materials, it is expected that it would not be possible to use, in both materials, the same formulae for the member stability calculation, as proposed in Eurocode 3. This paper aims at increasing the knowledge on the behaviour of stainless steel axially loaded columns at elevated temperatures. For this purpose, a geometrical and material non linear computer code has been used to determine the buckling load of these elements. The Eurocode formulae are evaluated and a new proposal, that ensures accurate and conservative results when compared with the numerical simulations, is presented. reduction factor for the flexural buckling in axis in case of fire χ min,fi minimum of the reduction factor χ i,fi NOTATIONS INTRODUCTIONThe use of stainless steel for structural purposes has been limited to projects with high architectural value, where the innovative character of the adopted solutions is intended to add value to the structure. The high initial cost of stainless steel, coupled with: (i) limited design rules, (ii) reduced number of available sections and (iii) lack of knowledge on the additional benefits of its use as a structural material, are some of the reasons that force designers to avoid its use. However, more accurate analyses point to a good performance of stainless steel when compared against conventional carbon steel in fire situation [1,2,3].The most important advantage of stainless steels is their corrosion resistance, however, their aesthetic appearance, ease of maintenance, durability and the low life-cycle costs are also valuable characteristics. Engineers often disregard these advantages of stainless steel due to its high initial cost. Nevertheless, greater importance is being given to total life costing because of high maintenance, shutdown, demolition and parts replacement costs. Experience has shown that the benefits of a long life with low maintenance and repair requirements more than compensates for the higher initial purchase cost of stainless steel.Part 1-4 of Eurocode 3 (EC3) "Supplementary rules for stainless steels" [4] gives design rules for stainless steel structural elements at room temperature, and only mentions the stainless steel structural elements fire resistance by referring to the fire part of the same Eurocode, EN 1993-1-2 [5]. Although carbon steel and stainless steel have different constitutive laws, EC3 states that the structural elements made of these two materials must be checked for their fire resistance with the same formulae. Thus, based on the formulae in Part 1-4 of EC3, Uppfeldt [6] presented a design model for stainless steel hollow columns in case of fire based on both experimental and numerical tests. Regarding the study of axially loaded carbon steel columns, Franssen in 1996 [7,8] proposed a procedure for the safety...
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