Assessing the Ecosystem Services of Various Types of Urban Green Spaces Based on i-Tree Eco

Peihao Song, Gunwoo Kim, Audrey Mayer, Ruizhen He and Guohang Tian
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Peihao Song: Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450002, China
Gunwoo Kim: Graduate School of Urban Studies, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Republic of Korea
Audrey Mayer: College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton 49931, MI, USA
Ruizhen He: Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450002, China
Guohang Tian: Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450002, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Urban green spaces play a crucial role in maintaining urban ecosystem sustainability by providing numerous ecosystem services. How to quantify and evaluate the ecological benefits and services of urban green spaces remains a hot topic currently, while the evaluation is barely applied or implemented in urban design and planning. In this study, super-high-resolution aerial images were used to acquire the spatial distribution of urban green spaces; a modified pre-stratified random sampling method was applied to obtain the vegetation information of the four types of urban green spaces in Luohe, a common plain city in China; and i-Tree Eco model was further used to assess the vegetation structure and various ecosystem services including air quality improvement, rainfall interception, carbon storage, and sequestration provided by four types of urban green spaces. The modeling results reveal that there were about 1,006,251 trees in this area. In 2013, all the trees in these green spaces could store about 54,329 t of carbon, sequester about 4973 t of gross carbon, remove 92 t of air pollutants, and avoid 122,637 m 3 of runoff. The study illustrates an innovative method to reveal different types of urban green spaces with distinct ecosystem service productivity capacity to better understand their various roles in regulating the urban environment. The results could be used to assist urban planners and policymakers to optimize urban green space structure and composition to maximize ecosystem services provision.

Keywords: urban green space; ecosystem services; i-Tree Eco; vegetation structure; Luohe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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