Significance of Urban Vegetation on Lawns Regarding the Risk of Fire

Abstract

Urban green infrastructure significantly influences the functioning of a city and the comfort of its residents. Lawns are an essential element of public greenery. They represent a live component, and if they are lacking, of low quality, or neglected, this will cause major problems in the urban environment. The vegetation structure of urban grassy areas changes under the influence of different management methods used for their maintenance. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the species diversity of urban lawns and to determine the influence of this vegetation on factors based on the representation of the species found. Three sites with urban lawns were chosen in a built-up city area where different types of vegetation management were applied: Typical management, in which grassy areas are mowed twice a year; intensive management, in which lawns are mowed several times a year and the biomass is removed; and extensive management, in which lawns are mowed irregularly, once a year at most, and the biomass is left unevenly on the site. Extensive management and unkempt urban grassy areas represent a high risk of fire due to the presence of plant species that produce great amounts of biomass. Combined with dry and warm weather, the dead biomass can lead to outbreaks of fire. Extensive management of urban grassy areas brings some benefits, such as lower maintenance costs and increased biodiversity and bioretention. On the other hand, intensive management reduces the risk of fire and the biodiversity of the plant community. Attention should be paid to the composition of vegetative species and their functions that could threaten the safety of residents, with the risk of fire being one of them. However, the vegetation biomass of grassy areas affected by management practices is only a precondition for the risk of fire because weather and drought occurrence play important roles as well.

Space Redevelopment of Old Landfill Located in the Zone between Urban and Protected Areas: Case Study

“…Technical reclamation of municipal waste landfills also includes the installation of degassing system, using in the energy recovery process [28]. Published accounts indicate that vegetation is an indispensable element of landfill sites [55,63,64] and can adapt to very diverse environments [75]. Therefore, knowledge of plant succession is the basis for solutions aiming at retrieval and recultivation of degraded ecosystems in solid waste landfills [55,64].…”

“…Even though investigations of biocoenosis composition (diverse community) inhabiting landfills are a long-term process, they are of fundamental significance for the understanding of the complex dynamics of the processes on which remediation of degraded areas is based [78]. Moreover, vegetation should be analysed as a whole [63]. Rebele and Lehmann [79] indicate that case studies based on longterm analyses may supply knowledge of plant development in a specific area and general information on succession mechanisms, as well as other types of vegetation dynamics.…”

“…The phytocoenological relevés were evaluated by using multidimensional analysis of ecological data with Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) and Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) [63,64]. Multivariate analyses make it possible to explain the relationship between the explanatory variables, but also to explain the relationship between the plant species found.…”

Public recreation and landscape protection - with environment hand in hand…

“…Grasses represent a significant source of risk for fire (Ryspekov et al, 2021;Winkler et al, 2021). Grass species are an important part of vineyard vegetation in Moravian vineyards (Lišková et al, 2016;Maxianová et al, 2016;Ragasová et al, 2019).…”

Solution to what? Global assessment of nature-based solutions, urban challenges, and outcomes

“…Such evidence is important to understand the interactions between outcomes related to social, ecological, and technical dimensions of complex urban systems underlying the effectiveness of NbS (McPhearson et al, 2022). For example, extensively managed lawns can foster plant species richness but represent high fire risk (Winkler et al, 2021), which shows that management choices in the technical dimension can influence the impacts on ecological and social dimensions. Understanding the interactions can improve urban planning and management choices to maximize synergies and avoid significant trade-offs, to ensure more effective and sustainable NbS (Gómez Martín, Giordano, Pagano, van der Keur, & Máñez Costa, 2020;Raymond, Frantzeskaki, et al, 2017).…”