Urbanization significantly influences the capacity of ecosystems to provide services for humans. A better understanding of the response of ecosystem service capacity (ESC) to urbanization is essential for sustainable urban planning. The purpose of this study is to analyze the spatio-temporal patterns of ESC change during rapid urbanization in the Pingshan River Catchment in Shenzhen, China. We developed

As cities increasingly turn to nature-based solutions to address key urban socio-ecological challenges, approaches to their governance, planning and implementation are increasingly important for ensuring their effectiveness. Nature-based solutions are multifunctional, and so their planning and implementation are by necessity interdisciplinary. As such, to support urban transitions with nature-based

Urban parks are vital ecological recreational places, and their spatial evolution has a certain influence on the ecological environment and quality of citizens’ daily life. Taking Beijing as an example, this paper firstly explores the dynamic evolution of urban parks in Beijing by comparing spatial distribution characteristics in three time points of 2005, 2010 and 2017. Besides changes in number and

University campuses (including college campuses) are home to many ecologists and conservationists, resulting in a large number of studies on campus plant and animal taxa. However, a systematic review on the biodiversity of university campuses is still lacking. We conducted a comprehensive review covering the history, diversity and distribution patterns of living biodiversity on university campuses

Although different studies have evaluated the positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures on reducing noise pollution and traffic levels and improving air quality, how populations have perceived such changes in the natural environment has not been adequately evaluated. The present study provides a more in-depth exploration of human population perception of enhanced natural exposure

Campus greenness reportedly has a restorative effect on university students by reducing stress and fatigue. This study questioned whether more biodiverse green-spaces have more restorative effects than conventional lawns in campus environments. Unlike most previous studies solely relying on visual stimuli, this study focused on the effect of multisensory (visual and auditory) stimuli on mental restoration

A substantial portion of urban green infrastructure is under private tenure in residents’ and business/corporate gardens. Therefore, the ways that urban residents manage their gardens can influence the type, quantity and quality of ecosystem services and disservices in urban areas. Plant nurseries are a major source of trees for urban residents, and so the types of trees and species that nurseries

Urban green infrastructure provides a range of experiences for people and various health benefits that support human well-being. To increase urban resilience, exceptional situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are important to learn from. This study aims to understand how the residents in Turku, a middle-sized city in Finland, perceived their outdoor recreation changed and how nature contributed

Previous research has shown that trees and other roadside vegetation can mitigate adverse environmental conditions on urban street corridors, and, in turn, positively contribute to pedestrian perceptions of safety and walkability. In this study, pedestrian surveys (n = 181) were collected from three Massachusetts post-industrial cities to understand if street trees moderate pedestrian perceptions of

The effects of urban heat islands (UHIs) comprise one of the most challenging issues in mitigating excessive heat. Existing studies have reported cooling effects from small greenspaces (SGs) and building-shaded spaces (BSs). However, more empirical studies are necessary to fully investigate the role of SGs in heat reduction as a cooling solution for urban microclimatic design and planning. In addition

Tree canopy is critical to urban sustainability. At present, enhancing urban tree canopy in many cities is largely dependent upon plantings on residential and park areas. However, challenges surrounding public engagement in tree planting and stewardship remain. This project engaged visitors to public venues in the City of Los Angeles in a ‘plant your street’ research game. Participants (n = 184) used

This study aimed to demonstrate the effects of forest-derived visual, auditory, and combined stimulation on brain activity, autonomic nervous system activity, and subjective spatial impressions. The participants included 20 Japanese female university students (age 22.1 ± 1.8 years). Each participant viewed a gray image for 60 s with no sound (rest period), followed by an image of a forest scene with

Development of urban agglomerations and the intensification of agriculture profoundly affect bees’ food resources, hence ecosystem services such as pollination. A solitary bee, Osmia bicornis (syn. O. rufa), is an effective springtime pollinator of crops, decorative and wild plants. However, it is largely unknown if this species is conservative or plastic in pollen collection in different environments

Urban Blue Spaces are often treated as a part of Urban Green Infrastructure (UGS). However, the recognition of blue infrastructure as a linked but at the same time separate part of the UGS network is important, since water itself has many values while also posing a range of risks. In this study we identified 427 blue spaces within the administrative border of the city of Warsaw, Poland. We characterised

Forest edges have significant effects on plant species and trait compositions. However, most current studies on edge effects are based on natural forests, and studies on edge effects in urban forests are still limited. Here, we set up 50 survey plots in Wuchao Mountain National Forest Park, an urban forest of Hangzhou, China. We tested how species composition changed with distance from the forest edge

The first several years after planting a tree, referred to as the establishment period, are recognized to have the highest annual mortality rates; determining those factors that influence survival of young trees should be considered paramount. This research examined several factors that influence young urban tree mortality: nursery production type (i.e. bare root, gravel bed bare root, container, or

Community parks provide urban residents with open spaces for daily recreation and physical fitness activities. This study aims to investigate visitor activity patterns in urban parks and the relationship between urban park features and spatial vitality through the field observation of three community parks in the old town area of Zhengzhou City. Spatial vitality refers to the inclusiveness, aggregation

Urban green space (UGS) is critical to both physical and mental health of older adults. While older adults tend to live in cities rather in rural areas for better social support, their usage and perception of UGS in high-density areas have not been widely studied. The present study aims to investigate the inter-relationships between older adults’ perception and usage of UGS, as well as how the perception

Urbanization has resulted in significant habitat loss and fragmentation worldwide, which threats the provision of ecosystem services for human health and life. Maintaining and improving the connectivity of the remnant habitats in and around cities is essential for landscape planning. Landscape metrics have been widely used for modeling and evaluating how landscape structures affect habitat connectivity

Cities are human-dominated ecosystems where landscape transformation decreases biodiversity, a conservation concern when urbanization sprawls into biodiversity hotspots with high endemism. We aimed to evaluate the effects of site-specific features such as size and shape of green spaces, land cover, and vegetation on bird species richness in Medellín, Colombia, a city of Northern Andes (n = 44 urban

Spatially explicit information on urban tree species distribution is crucial for green infrastructure management in cities. This information is usually acquired with ground-based surveys, which are time-consuming and usually cover limited spatial extents. The combination of machine learning algorithms and remote sensing images has been hailed as a promising way to map tree species over broad areas

Singaporean parks are generally planted and managed, but their contribution to urban diversity may alter over time. This study examined the key growth patterns of managed vegetation and factors influencing floral diversity through short-term observation of vegetation changes in a typical tropical urban park setting. The study selected 222 plots using a 10m × 10m grid in three Singaporean parks and

The outdoor environment in nursing homes provides various opportunities for elderly citizens’ daily activities, which is closely linked to their health and well-being. The elderly’s preference for the outdoor environment in health-care settings is a major issue but has not been adequately investigated. This study aimed to explore the elderly’s visual and behavioural preference and the relationship

Evidence affirms that green space has health benefits, but ethnic inequities in green space availability are under-researched. Percentages of parkland, tree canopy, and open grass within 1.6 km road network distance from home were linked to 110,233 participants in the Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study baseline survey living in the cities of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. Participants were dichotomised

Background With rapid urbanization globally, people in cities tend to have fewer opportunities to interact with nature. Some health-promoting green infrastructure may support increased visitation. Objective To investigate associations between green space visitation and a range of health promoting green infrastructure. Methods From November 2019 to January 2020, we conducted a population-based cross-sectional

Urban green spaces provide a range of services to urban residents; however, how these distinct spaces provide different services, if any, to human wellbeing has been seldom addressed. Using large volumes of social media data considering broad user groups and publicly available content, we developed a method to transform unstructured online comments into a structured assessment of nine categories of

Exposure to ambient PM2.5 poses serious threats to human health. In such cases, the presence of green roofs (GRs) and green walls (GWs) has several environmental benefits, including the capture of pollutants. Choosing appropriate designs of GWs and GRs to improve urban air quality is challenging because their performances depend on their constituent species and environmental characteristics of the

The Gauteng City-Region in the northern interior of South Africa hosts one of the world’s largest and most densely vegetated urban forests. The tree species, distributed across pavements, parks and suburban gardens, comprise a range of indigenous and alien species. The most aesthetically distinct of these is Jacaranda mimosifolia (Bignoniaceae), a purple-blossoming tree introduced from Brazil in the

The aim of this study was to determine if local or regional native plants might be suitable for use on a custom living wall system (LWS) located in a humid subtropical climate. Nineteen taxa of plants native to the ecoregion or adjacent ecoregions were installed into 297 custom-designed modules fabricated from galvanized sheet metal by-products. This study reports plant survival and health ratings

Plant diversity in large cities has recently become a subject of intense biological research. Urban green spaces are widely acknowledged to improve people's quality of life. Unlike in wild areas, plants in urban ecosystems develop in spaces strongly managed by human activity and tend to form different compositions than the natural landscape. Under this scenario, would the motivations and preferences

Urban parks and gardens provide cultural and aesthetic services critical for human well-being. Yet, they represent one of the main reasons for the intentional introduction of ornamental species, some of which can escape and establish in natural ecosystems. Besides aesthetic reasons, climate and socioeconomic factors can also modulate which species are planted in urban parks. Here, we evaluate the relationship

Recently, the growing need to complement rural and foreign sources of food and woodfuel is driving interest in urban forestry management in medium cities. The present study was designed to characterize the diversity of fruit trees in households of two rapidly developing cities in southeastern DR Congo (Lubumbashi and Kolwezi), and shed light on the sociological aspects of their management. Analyses

Artificial lawns are an increasingly popular alternative to their living counterparts, but their environmental impacts are undocumented. The hydrological impacts of artificial (synthetic polymer) grass were investigated in comparison to living grass in a series of controlled rainfall experiments, representing daily short rainfall events of different volumes (750 mL, 1000 mL, 1250 mL). Two varieties

This research examined the psychological (perceived restoratives, emotion, stress, and mood) and physiological (blood pressure readings) effects of short-range visits to urban environments. Ninety participants visited two urban areas; Bukit Jalil Urban Park (a green space) and Bukit Jalil Urban Street (an urban a built-up city centre as a controlled environment) located in a tropical city Kuala Lumpur

With the continuous advancement of global urbanization and increasingly serious ecological problems, ecological space protection has gradually become one of the concerns of urban planning. Although some cities worldwide have relatively robust urban planning implementation systems, due to the different planning means and methods of ecological space protection, there lacks a set of standards for the

As a crucial part of urban green space, urban shrub biomass and biomass allocation play an important role in the urban carbon cycle. However, the current body of research mainly focuses on natural vegetation, and the biomass allocation patterns of urban shrubs remain poorly addressed. In this study, whole-plant harvests of 13 common urban shrubs in the Yangtze River Delta region were conducted to ascertain

Particulate matter (PM) removal is a major component of ecosystem services provided by urban green infrastructure. The annual PM removal service of plant species has generally been determined based on net PM removal ability. However, little is known about the leaf surface area normalized net PM mass removal abilities and efficiencies of different species. Net PM removal ability is the PM removed from

Urban parks can provide many physical and psychological health benefits, but these may not be shared equitably among visitors. The purpose of this study was to explore park visitor demographics and activities, as well as their in-depth narratives regarding experiences, perceptions of accessibility, and desired improvements in a range of urban park types, using Portland, Oregon as a case study. We used

Elms are important amenity trees in the European part of Russia, incl. the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region. The native species Ulmus glabra and U. laevis mainly grow there, on the northern border of their natural range. Hybrid elm cultivars have been planted since the early 2000s. Thousands of elms suffer from Dutch elm disease in the Leningrad Region. We found that in the north-western part of

This study establishes the causal effect of winter streets’ design on people’s psychological health, specifically, restoration from stress and mental fatigue. A lab experiment was conducted to identify the effect of vegetation and brightness in winter scenarios on people’s mental restoration. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to three different treatments (vegetation, brightness, and

Tree pollen with allergenic potential in cities triggers nasal, skin, eye, and asthmatic allergic reactions in humans. Pollen is one of the most common allergy-causing inhaled substances. Tree species composition, cultivar selection and the proximity of certain trees to humans can influence allergic responses. Data from 53 cities or states from various parts of the world were used to assess the magnitude

Engaging in physical activity plays a vital role in a healthy ageing process due to its associated mental and physical health benefits. Green spaces such as parks or public gardens are safe, accessible, and attractive environments that generally allow people to engage in physical activity. Therefore, residing in neighbourhoods that are well provided with greenness has been associated with improvements

More evidence has shown that exposure to particulate matter (PMs) within urban streets increases adverse health risks, and vegetation barriers have the potential to improve near-road air quality. To gain insight into the influences of vegetation barrier characteristics on the dispersion of PMs (TSP, PM10, PM2.5), field measurements were performed in Wuhan, China. Twenty-four sample belts were selected

Extreme heatwaves and drought have been shown to significantly affect urban tree survival, with potentially substantial economic costs for urban managers and local governments. During the 2019–2020 austral summer, the western Sydney Local Government Area (LGA) of Penrith experienced unprecedented high temperatures with less than 60 % of average rainfall compared with the proceeding five summers. This

Urban green spaces can contribute to conserve some of the original avian diversity in urbanized landscapes. However, the relative contribution of urban agriculture vs. urban forest remnants to the preservation of the avifauna in large cities, particularly in developing countries in the tropics, remains poorly documented. We assessed bird assemblages in the densely-populated capital city of Port-au-Prince

Urbanization decreases the species richness and results in the homogenization of bird communities. Bird species are important indicator species for biodiversity and reflect the habitat quality of urban forests and other green spaces. In this study we investigated the key drivers that influence bird communities in urban forests and green spaces in the Southeastern European city of Ljubljana, Slovenia

The aim of this study was to examine whether personality traits, health status, and moods are systematically related to perceived urban mountain park quality and recreation satisfaction. Previous studies on park-related satisfaction have typically tried to understand the effects of environmental attributes on people’s recreation satisfaction. However, park satisfaction studies also require careful

Old residential estates account for over 40 % of the total residential development in 20 major cities in China while the percentage is up to 61 % for Shanghai. Many of these old residential estates are facing the dilemma of the increasing demand for car parking space and the deteriorating outdoor thermal conditions. This paper presents a parametric study on the impact of arranging parking spaces and

Air pollution exposure can impact plant physiology, morphology and biochemistry, leading to dramatic alterations to plant systems, function and growth. The use of plants for air pollution mitigation is increasing in popularity, particularly in the form of green wall systems, making the identification and classification of pollution sensitive and tolerant species essential. This study aimed to examine

With increasingly diversified and personalized lifestyles, visitors’ recreation behaviors within urban parks have become more and more active and changeable; meeting this novel change in demand has become a new challenge for effective park design and management. In fact, it has become an urgent task to understand more precisely how visitors flow through parks and in what patterns. This paper used Global

This study attempts to quantify thermal-stress abatement by tress, using the example of Bihar Museum at Patna, Bihar, India, where around 200 trees, though known as great solar heat attenuators, were felled to accommodate the newly-built museum. The study, with a focus on sensitivity analysis, compares two tree scenarios, at two input wind-speeds and seeks to identify the individual/synergetic effects

Urban greenspace (UGS) represents an essential component of city ecosystems. It plays a critical role for various purposes, such as reducing urban heat island effect and air pollution, regulating torrential run-off and offering joyful routes for walking, jogging and cycling based on personal interest as well as a platform for social networking. It is especially important in a populated country like

The increasing urbanization within cities correlates with the loss of green cover, affecting the distribution of bird species. Therefore, to foresee possible effects induced by green cover loss, it is essential to have spatial data of species occurrence. Remote sensors produce spatial data of green cover, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which can be used to model bird species

Reduction pruning of main tree stems is commonly performed in the maintenance of an electricity distribution network to encourage the growth of scaffold limbs away from the wires. Understanding both the initiation and growth of epicormic branch after reduction pruning interventions, as well as the area of discolored wood at the cutting point are important for optimizing the pruning cycle and maintaining

Cities are experiencing numerous challenges, adversely affecting human health and wellbeing. Urban green space provides ecosystem services that are important to meet urban challenges. One type of urban green space is private gardens (yards) that make up an essential part of many urban areas. Gardens can support urban biodiversity and provide cultural ecosystem services (CES) to its owner. However,