The green areas of San Juan, Puerto Rico

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Green areas, also known as green infrastructure or urban vegetation, are vital to urbanites for their critical roles in mitigating urban heat island effects and climate change and for their provision of multiple ecosystem services and aesthetics. Here, I provide a high spatial resolution snapshot of the green cover distribution of the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, by incorporating the use of morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) as a tool to describe the spatial pattern and connectivity of the city's urban green areas. Analysis of a previously developed IKONOS 4-m spatial resolution classification of the city of San Juan from 2002 revealed a larger area of vegetation (green areas or green infrastructure) than previously estimated by moderate spatial resolution imagery. The city as a whole had approximately 42% green cover and 55% impervious surfaces. Although the city appeared greener in its southern upland sector compared to the northern coastal section, where most built-up urban areas occurred (66% impervious surfaces), northern San Juan had 677 ha more green area cover dispersed across the city than the southern component. MSPA revealed that most forest cover occurred as edges and cores, and green areas were most commonly forest cores, with larger predominance in the southern sector of the municipality. In dense, built-up, urban land, most of the green areas occurred in private yards as islets. When compared to other cities across the United States, San Juan was most similar in green cover features to Boston, Massachusetts, and Miami, Florida. Per capita green space for San Juan (122.2 m²/inhabitant) was also comparable to these two U.S. cities. This study explores the intra-urban vegetation variation in the city of San Juan, which is generally overlooked by moderate spatial resolution classifications in Puerto Rico. It serves as a starting point for green infrastructure mapping and landscape pattern analysis of the urban green spaces within the city of San Juan. The effectiveness of research and city planning will be further enhanced as a result of this type of finer-scale urban cover exploration.

Vegetation cover in relation to socioeconomic factors in a tropical city assessed from sub‐meter resolution imagery

“…), but MSPA has the advantage that is much simpler and easier to use, once a vegetation cover layer is available. In the San Juan Metropolitan Area, we found that residential and non‐residential vegetation have very different spatial patterns, which are overlooked when assessing only total vegetation cover (Ramos‐González ). Especially the substantial presence of non‐residential vegetation, with a median cover of 15% at the census block group level, is interesting.…”

“…Increasing the edge width will increase the non‐core area at the expense of the core area. In a previous study, Ramos‐González () used MSPA to characterize green infrastructure from 4‐m resolution Ikonos data in a portion of our study area and found that the class “Islet” (defined as disjoint objects that are too small or narrow to contain Core) from an edge width of 4 Ikonos pixels (16 m) is a good proxy for residential vegetation. However, the approach has not been tested for its accuracy.…”

“…However, the approach has not been tested for its accuracy. We applied the same rule using an edge width of 50 0.3‐m pixels (15 m), which was the closest option in MSPA to the 16 m edge width used by Ramos‐González (). Our class “residential vegetation” therefore included the MSPA class Islet, and “non‐residential vegetation” included all other MSPA classes combined.…”

“…). Simple approaches based on spatial pattern analysis, which describes the geometry and connectivity of image pixels, have been explored as a potential way to separate residential and non‐residential vegetation when auxiliary spatial information is missing (Ramos‐González ), but the accuracy of this approach has not been quantified.…”

Synthesis of Household Yard Area Dynamics in the City of San Juan Using Multi-Scalar Social-Ecological Perspectives

“…Green spaces, whether urban or rural, offer humans a variety of ecological services that ultimately contribute to human well-being and security [3][4][5], typically at localized scales directly experienced by individuals. Within cities, residential landscapes are often a dominant land use [6][7][8]. From an urban sustainability and adaptive capacity perspective, domestic yards, when managed appropriately, could provide residents with mitigation against island heat, storm-attenuation services, cultural services like place-making and nature fulfillment, and even health benefits such as the production of food and medicinal plants, among other things [9,10].…”