Green spaces are not all the same for the provision of air purification and climate regulation services: The case of urban parks

作者：Joana Vieira, Paula Matos, Teresa Mexia, Patrícia Silva, Nuno Lopes, Catarina Freitas, Otília Correia, Margarida Santos‐Reis, Cristina Branquinho, Pedro Pinho · 发表于：Environmental Research · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1016/j.envres.2017.10.006 · 被引用次数：296 · 研究领域：Urban Green Space and Health、Lichen and fungal ecology、Land Use and Ecosystem Services

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 t...