Site-specific factors in the production of local urban ecosystem services: A case study of community-managed green space

Dennis, Matthew; James, Philip

doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.01.003

Cited by 35 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Urban areas do not necessarily provide fewer ecosystem services compared to other regions, as urban green infrastructure, such as tree cover or peri-urban agriculture, can significantly contribute to support biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery (Dennis andJames 2016, Larondelle andHaase 2013). However, in this case, the high recreational ecosystem service flow in green urban areas appears to be unbalanced with the capacity of these spaces to deliver these services given the relatively low number of caches in these environments.…”

Section: Evidence-based Management Of Urban Recreational Ecosystem Sementioning

confidence: 76%

Assessing urban recreation ecosystem services through the use of geocache visitation and preference data: a case-study from an urbanised island environment

Balzan¹,

Debono²

2018

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Recreation is an important cultural ecosystem service and is one way in which communities experience the direct and indirect benefits arising from the experiential use of their environment. The recent rise in popularity of Global Positioning System (GPS) game applications, which combine information technology with an activity that increases mobility and encourages outdoor enjoyment, provides ecosystem service practitioners with an opportunity to make use of this georeferenced data to assess recreational ecosystem services. Geocaching is one such worldwide outdoor game. It has fixed points of incursion where people can hide and look for caches. This study explores the possibility of using geocaching data as a proxy for recreational ecosystems services in the Maltese Islands. A quantitative analysis of the georeferenced caches was used together with their visit rates and number of favourite points. This was supplemented by two questionnaires that investigated the preferences and experiences of both geocache placers (n=39) and hunters (n=21). Results show that the highest number of caches were placed and searched for in urban areas and that geocaching is strongly associated with the presence and accessibility of urban green infrastructure. The number of geocachers who stated preference for ‡ ‡ © Balzan MV, Debono I. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.experiences in nature did not translate into high visit rates to sites of high conservation value (protected areas) but landscape value was significantly associated with recreational ecosystem services flow. The results presented here provide evidence that geocaching spatial data can act as an indicator for assessing and mapping recreational ecosystem services in urban environments and in cultural landscapes.

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Section: Evidence-based Management Of Urban Recreational Ecosystem Sementioning

confidence: 76%

Assessing urban recreation ecosystem services through the use of geocache visitation and preference data: a case-study from an urbanised island environment

Balzan¹,

Debono²

2018

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“…Under the classification schemes of the UA and LCM, however, it is not possible to identify such sites as consisting of green and blue space at all. Such spaces provide important social [69][70][71] and ecological [71][72][73] benefits and present a pertinent example of how smaller but highly productive urban green spaces have hitherto been overlooked in urban mapping classification schemes. The ability to capture such spaces and their associated landscape features is a key improvement made possible through the mapping approach developed here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Urban Green Infrastructure: A Novel Landscape-Based Approach to Incorporating Land Use and Land Cover in the Mapping of Human-Dominated Systems

Dennis

Barlow

Cavan

et al. 2018

Land

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Common approaches to mapping green infrastructure in urbanised landscapes invariably focus on measures of land use or land cover and associated functional or physical traits. However, such onedimensional perspectives do not accurately capture the character and complexity of the landscapes in which urban inhabitants live. The new approach presented in this paper demonstrates how open-source, high spatial and temporal resolution data with global coverage can be used to measure and represent the landscape qualities of urban environments. Through going beyond simple metrics of quantity, such as percentage green and blue cover, it is now possible to explore the extent to which landscape quality helps to unpick the mixed evidence presented in the literature on the benefits of urban nature to human well-being. Here we present a landscape approach, employing remote sensing, GIS and data reduction techniques to map urban green infrastructure elements in a large U.K. city region. Comparison with existing urban datasets demonstrates considerable improvement in terms of coverage and thematic detail. The characterisation of landscapes, using census tracts as spatial units, and subsequent exploration of associations with social-ecological attributes highlights the further detail that can be uncovered by the approach. For example, eight urban landscape types identified for the case study city exhibited associations with distinct socioeconomic conditions accountable not only to quantities but also qualities of green and blue space. The identification of individual landscape features through simultaneous measures of land use and land cover demonstrated unique and significant associations between the former and indicators of human health and ecological condition. The approach may therefore provide a promising basis for developing further insight into processes and characteristics that affect human health and well-being in urban areas, both in the United Kingdom and beyond.

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“…As a natural rainwater storage and purification facility, urban green space not only helps enhance the infiltration of runoff to supplements the groundwater [1][2][3] , but also reduces the speed of runoff. Besides, it can improve the removal efficiency of pollutants settlement and reduce the scour of soils by runoff [4][5] . Urban green space also plays a very important role in reducing the runoff peak flow [6][7][8] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvement of Rainwater Infiltration Property and Its Effect on the Corresponding Storage Capacity of Soil in Urban Green Space

Keke

et al. 2018

E3S Web Conf.

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Urban green space whose soil permeability is the main factor affecting hydrological cycle plays a very important role in promoting rainwater infiltration, replenishing groundwater and reducing peak flow. In order to enhance the storage and infiltration ability of soil, different types and contents of conditioner are added to study the laws of the changes in permeability of various soils. The results showed that straw and sawdust can effectively increase the permeability coefficient of soil. According to the comparison under the same conditions, the improvement effects of straw is slightly better than sawdust, but no order of magnitude difference. The sandy soil reformed by 3.6% Straw or 4.2% Sawdust and the loam reformed by 29.5% Straw or 30.2% Sawdust can meet infiltration requires of rainwater whose rainstorm recurrence period is 10 years. The clay is not suitable for urban green space soils with higher rainwater storage and infiltration requirements. The reformed green space can effectively reduce the runoff peak flow and delay the generated time of the runoff. The higher the content of the modifier, the more obvious the advantage of promoting the hydrological cycle and reducing the runoff.

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Site-specific factors in the production of local urban ecosystem services: A case study of community-managed green space

Cited by 35 publications

References 59 publications

Assessing urban recreation ecosystem services through the use of geocache visitation and preference data: a case-study from an urbanised island environment

Assessing urban recreation ecosystem services through the use of geocache visitation and preference data: a case-study from an urbanised island environment

Mapping Urban Green Infrastructure: A Novel Landscape-Based Approach to Incorporating Land Use and Land Cover in the Mapping of Human-Dominated Systems

Improvement of Rainwater Infiltration Property and Its Effect on the Corresponding Storage Capacity of Soil in Urban Green Space

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