Understanding spatial patterns in the production of multiple urban ecosystem services

Alison R. Holt, Meghann Mears, Lorraine Maltby and Philip Warren

Ecosystem Services, 2015, vol. 16, issue C, 33-46

Abstract: Urbanisation is a key driver of land use change and urban growth is set to continue. The provision of ecosystem services depends on the existence of greenspace. Urban morphology is potentially an important influence on ecosystem services. Therefore, it may be possible to promote service provision through an urban structure that supplies the processes and functions that underpin them. However, an understanding of the ability of urban areas to produce multiple ecosystem services, and the spatial pattern of their production, is required. We demonstrate an approach using easily accessible data, to generate maps of key urban ecosystem services for a case study city of Sheffield, UK. Urban greenspace with a mixture of land covers allowed areas of high production of multiple services in the city centre and edges. But crucially the detection of such ‘hotspots’ depended on the spatial resolution of the mapping unit. This shows there is potential to design cities to promote hotspots of production. We discuss how land cover type, its spatial location and how this relates to different suites of services, is key to promoting urban multifunctionality. Detecting trade-offs and synergies associated with particular urban designs will enable more informed decisions for achieving urban sustainability.

Keywords: Ecosystem services; Mapping; Spatial pattern; Urbanisation; Urban greenspace; Urban planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041615300243
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:16:y:2015:i:c:p:33-46

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.08.007

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().