Scenario Analysis of Green Infrastructure to Adapt Medium-Size Cities to Climate Change: The Case of Zaragoza, Spain

Elie Hanna, María R. Felipe-Lucia and Francisco A. Comín ()
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Elie Hanna: Departamento de Ciencias Agrarias y del Medio Natural, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad de Zaragoza, 22071 Huesca, Spain
María R. Felipe-Lucia: Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC, 22700 Jaca, Spain
Francisco A. Comín: Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: Planning a well-structured urban green infrastructure (UGI) is essential for cities to counteract the impacts of climate change. Soil carbon and air temperature differences between open and plant-covered sites were used as proxies of carbon sequestration (CS) and temperature regulation (TR) to evaluate the current conditions of UGI in Zaragoza, a medium-sized city in northeastern Spain. Alternative scenarios were constructed, after a stakeholder consultation, at both city and municipal (city plus peri-urban zone) scales, extrapolating the highest values of CS and TR to two groups of UGI types grouped based on the state of their ecological functioning. We employed analysis of variance to compare mean values of CS and TR across diverse scenarios at both city and municipality scales. Statistically significant differences were found in city-scale and municipality-scale scenarios for both CS and TR. Multiplying CS by area did not show significant variation in city scale. Significant differences were found when multiplying TR by area at both scales, with exceptions in certain scenario combinations. These results suggest favoring the restoration of UGI sites in peri-urban zones (such as forests and steppe zones) to increase CS and those in densely urbanized zones (such as urban parks) to provide TR benefits.

Keywords: urban planning; restoration; adaptation services; nature-based solutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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