Buffer Green Patches around Urban Road Network as a Tool for Sustainable Soil Management

Slaveya Petrova, Bogdan Nikolov, Iliana Velcheva, Nikola Angelov, Ekaterina Valcheva, Aneliya Katova, Irena Golubinova and Plamen Marinov-Serafimov
Additional contact information
Slaveya Petrova: Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”, 24 Tzar Asen Str., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Bogdan Nikolov: Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”, 24 Tzar Asen Str., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Iliana Velcheva: Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”, 24 Tzar Asen Str., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Nikola Angelov: Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”, 24 Tzar Asen Str., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Ekaterina Valcheva: Department of Agroecology and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Plant Protection and Agroecology, Agricultural University, 12 Mendeleev Blvd, 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Aneliya Katova: Agricultural Academy, Institute of Forage Crops, 89 General Vladimir Vazov Str., 5800 Pleven, Bulgaria
Irena Golubinova: Agricultural Academy, Institute of Forage Crops, 89 General Vladimir Vazov Str., 5800 Pleven, Bulgaria
Plamen Marinov-Serafimov: Agricultural Academy, Institute of Forage Crops, 89 General Vladimir Vazov Str., 5800 Pleven, Bulgaria

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: Urban areas are facing a range of environmental challenges including air, water and soil pollution as a result of industrial, domestic and traffic emissions. In addition, global climate change is likely to aggravate certain urban problems and disturb the urban ecology by increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. In the context of urbanization growth and the consequent impact on the environment, there is a growing interest in maintaining urban soil quality and functions as they are the medium for green infrastructure development. Furthermore, urban soils are becoming one of the key factors in the delivery of many ecosystem services such as carbon storage, climate regulation, water flow regulation, etc. On the other hand, urban soils are well-known to be a major sink of air pollutants due to the wet and dry atmospheric deposition and recirculation. Soil has the ability to degrade some chemical contaminants but when the levels are high, urban soils could hold on large amounts and pose a risk to human health. A cost-effective technological solution is to use the ability of some plant species to metabolize, accumulate and detoxify heavy metals or other harmful organic or inorganic compounds from the soil layer. The establishment of urban lawns (grass covered surfaces) is a helpful, environmentally friendly, economically sustainable and cost-effective approach to remove contaminants from polluted soils (terrains), which also has some aesthetic benefits. In this paper, an overview of the benefits and limitations of urban lawn construction is presented. The focus is on the perspectives for sustainable management of urban lawns, especially as buffer green patches in the road network surroundings, that can represent strategies to provide ecological and social multifunctionality of urban soils, and thus, increasing their ecosystem services capacity. Specifically, the paper highlights (i) the possibilities for phytoremediation of urban soils, (ii) potential of some perennial grasses and (iii) key issues that should be considered in the planning and design of urban lawns.

Keywords: phytoremediation; soil pollution; perennial grasses; green infrastructure; ecosystem services; life quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/3/343/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/3/343/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:3:p:343-:d:758997

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().