Forest Ecosystem Services and Urban Green Space
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 26594
Special Issue Editor
Interests: forest policy; economics and governance; valuation of ecosystem services; urban forests and urban green areas
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urbanization, population growth and climate change have negative impacts on forest ecosystem services (ES) and on urban green areas, posing difficult challenges to planners and managers, at the same time seriously affecting ecological and social sustainability and human wellbeing.
The basic concept of ES considers that human wellbeing is related to the services provided by nature and by urban green infrastructure. Their degradation also leads to a reduction of the wellbeing in terms of economic value. Services produced by ecosystems include edible fruits as food, the regulation of drinking water amount and quality, natural waste recycling, influence on climate—especially regulating the temperature and tide as well as biodiversity, while also providing places for rest, recreation, reflection and human–human and human–nature interaction.
Forests and urban green areas provide numerous ES that are essential to the wellbeing of residents. However, our understanding of the key variables that determine the provisioning each of these services remains limited, and variability in the effects of green areas’ characteristics among ES complicates the ability for management to provide multiple ES. Thus, the identification of the specific variables associated with each ES is critical to provide insights into ways of achieving and providing the unique set of ES required by users.
Mapping and assessing the importance and value of ES as well as their losses due to rapid urban expansion plays a significant role in sustainable development. Different approaches, models and methods have been proposed in the different research fields for the qualitative, quantitative and monetary evaluation of ecosystem services. There are several types of tools (biophysical, economic, mixed, etc.) at different scales (regional, local, etc.) aimed at biophysical and/or economic dimensions, also integrating multi-criteria analysis with geographical information systems (GISs). Therefore, the assessment and evaluation of ES can play a fundamental role in the evaluation processes of political choices, public investments and entrepreneurial activities.
Urban planning processes supported by ES assessment and analysis lead policy makers to re-think and re-orient their strategies for the sustainable transformation of built areas. The assessment of the impacts of urban transformation processes should take into account economic and no-market goods having the multifunctionality of forests and urban green areas in mind. Currently, planning tools often neglect the ES and their dynamic interactions, while it is necessary to use innovative approaches to address issues that currently represent key points of local, national and international policies (United Nations, 2015).Therefore, it is important and necessary to integrate social-ecological systems into urban planning, management and governance.
This Special Issue aims to explore innovative approaches for assessing, evaluating and enhancing the sustainability of ES provided by forests and urban green areas in the face of climate change and increasing urbanization concerns. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following keywords.
Dr. Dijana Vuletić
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- •Assessing and evaluating ecosystem services
- •Ecosystem services, ecosystem disservices, and wellbeing
- •Urban biodiversity and ecosystem services
- •Ecosystem service degradation, biodiversity losses
- •Green infrastructure planning and governance
- •Modelling ecosystem services
- •Nature-based solutions
- •Social-ecological systems
- •Urban forest
- •Urban sustainability.
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