IoT Monitoring of Urban Tree Ecosystem Services: Possibilities and Challenges

Abstract

Urban green infrastructure plays an increasingly significant role in sustainable urban development planning as it provides important regulating and cultural ecosystem services. Monitoring of such dynamic and complex systems requires technological solutions which provide easy data collection, processing, and utilization at affordable costs. To meet these challenges a pilot study was conducted using a network of wireless, low cost, and multiparameter monitoring devices, which operate using Internet of Things (IoT) technology, to provide real-time monitoring of regulatory ecosystem services in the form of meaningful indicators for both human health and environmental policies. The pilot study was set in a green area situated in the center of Moscow, which is exposed to the heat island effect as well as high levels of anthropogenic pressure. Sixteen IoT devices were installed on individual trees to monitor their ecophysiological parameters from 1 July to 31 November 2019 with a time resolution of 1.5 h. These parameters were used as input variables to quantify indicators of ecosystem services related to climate, air quality, and water regulation. Our results showed that the average tree in the study area during the investigated period reduced extreme heat by 2 °C via shading, cooled the surrounding area by transferring 2167 ± 181 KWh of incoming solar energy into latent heat, transpired 137 ± 49 mm of water, sequestered 8.61 ± 1.25 kg of atmospheric carbon, and removed 5.3 ± 0.8 kg of particulate matter (PM10). The values of the monitored processes varied spatially and temporally when considering different tree species (up to five to ten times), local environmental conditions, and seasonal weather. Thus, it is important to use real-time monitoring data to deepen understandings of the processes of urban forests. There is a new opportunity of applying IoT technology not only to measure trees functionality through fluxes of water and carbon, but also to establish a smart urban green infrastructure operational system for management.

An Assessment of the Ecological Landscape Quality (ELQ) of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) Based on Existing Elements of Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI)

“…These elements fulfill most of the formal requirements to recognize an intervention as NBS proposed by Sowi ńska-Świerkosz and García [7] (Table 3). Previous research conducted by other authors in relation to different elements of GBI, including UPs [21,37,38], UFs [40][41][42], UWs [42][43][44][45]52], AGs [16,[46][47][48], and Ws [11,49,50], showed that these elements provide and/or improve environmental, social, and economic benefits, such as recreational and spiritual or cultural ecosystem services, physical and mental health, carbon sequestration, air purification, noise reduction, biodiversity and, in the case of AGs and UWs, food provisioning. In addition, the analyzed elements of GBI were found to mitigate various global problems, reflecting the SDGs, primarily good health and well-being, sustainable cities, responsible consumption, climate actions, and life on land and in water [53].…”

Complex Systems Thinking Approach to Urban Greenery to Provide Community-Tailored Solutions and Enhance the Provision of Cultural Ecosystem Services

“…These evaluations too often consider the UGS to be a homogeneous system. In reality, even without external intervention, the UGS is composed of many living elements (trees, shrubs, herbs, small animals, and users), which change throughout their life; as a consequence, the system also continuously changes, and does so at different speeds depending on its constituent variables [22]. Furthermore, the nature of the internal and external linkages is nonlinear [23] and some of them are, therefore, unpredictable and, to a certain extent, unknown [21].…”

Smart Harvest Operations and Timber Processing for Improved Forest Management

“…The same phenomena also lead to the formation of eccentric piths, which can be detected by tree-ring analysis. The vertical stability of a tree can be assessed using an automatic accelerometer (gyroscopic sensor), which measures the position and oscillation in three axes (Matasov et al 2020), therefore, providing useful information on the effect of wind exposure on the tree aerial architecture and species-specific biomechanics.…”