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Water Scarcity and Sustainable Urban Green Landscape
Published in Saeid Eslamian, Faezeh Eslamian, Handbook of Drought and Water Scarcity, 2017
Soleyman Dayani, Mohammad R. Sabzalian, Mahdi Hadipour, Saeid Eslamian
However, green spaces are not essentially planned on the ground. Today, in many urban settings, there is little space to plant trees or cultivate an urban forest within the land use chart of the city because of the plethora of impervious surfaces such as streets, parking lots, and rooftops [188]. The rooftops are defined as any kind of land occupation by synthetic elements and often comprise 40%–50% of the impermeable area in an urban land [127]. Today, the idea of green roofs is gaining more attention as a way to compensate for the natural lands lost by rooftops. Accordingly, rooftops are generally categorized as either “intensive” or “extensive” with respect to the feasibility and kind of green elements that could be embedded in these literally dead spaces. By definition, intensive green roofs are frequently designed as public places and may include trees, shrubs, and hardscapes similar to ground-based landscaping [145]. This kind of green cover is mainly suitable for roofs of underground city facilities or steady low-light buildings. In contrast, extensive green roofs, often never seen, require minimal maintenance and are generally built with substrate depths less than 15 cm. Because of the shallower depth of the substrate in this model due to the buildings’ technical limitations and safety standards, the plant choices are limited to grasses, herbaceous perennials, annuals, and drought-tolerant succulents such as Sedum [189]. The discussion regarding the techniques and design principles of implementing rooftop greenery is out of the scope of this work. In this chapter, we consider all types of ground- or rooftop-based vegetation as urban green spaces.
Sustainability in the Space Industry
Published in Mark W. McElroy, The Space Industry of the Future, 2023
Use of remote sensing data for urban forestry management can improve the health of a city’s trees and parks. The effects of more robust urban forest management are enhanced aesthetic appeal as well as functional advantages of urban trees like building energy efficiency and cleaner air. To this end, remote sensing data can be collected to measure leaf area and chlorophyll content to quantify and track vegetation density and growth. These measurements can be correlated with other variables such as water availability, pollution, and sunlight access in order to plan urban forests and make adjustments as needed over time.
Forests and Tree-based Land Use Systems: Mitigation and Adaptation Option to Combat Climate Change
Published in Moonisa Aslam Dervash, Akhlaq Amin Wani, Climate Change Alleviation for Sustainable Progression, 2022
Kamini Gautam, Sapna Thakur, Vipasha Bhat, Sheeraz Saleem Bhat
Trees have been an integral part of urban landscape since time immemorial (Bradshaw et al., 1995) and play a crucial role in reducing pollution and enhancing the quality of life. Urban forestry refers to the green spaces covering the woodlands/forests and groups of trees and individual trees located in the urban and suburban areas (FAO, 2016). Managing trees on a long term will establish a long-term urban forest ecosystem that will increase the rate of carbon sequestration of these ecosystems and support biodiversity conservation efforts at local, regional and global levels.
The importance of place-based narrative in suburban forest planning
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2021
People have been planting trees in cities throughout civilization, in a tradition that extends back to Ancient Greece and China. Since the 1960s, urban forestry has developed into an area of professionalized practice. This practice engages government representatives, public and private land managers, researchers, arborists, activists, landscape contractors and the general community (Campbell, Svendsen, and Roman 2016, 1262; Nitoslawski, Duinker, and Bush 2016, 478). Now many cities have tree planting initiatives and urban forest strategies that encourage tree planting in urban areas (Department of Planning; City of Bayswater 2015; The City of Melbourne 2012; City of Vancouver 2018). This surge in urban forest strategies is not surprising given the multitude of benefits urban forests provide to human health, the local urban environment, biodiversity conservation and real-estate values.
Relationship between PM2.5 adsorption and leaf surface morphology in ten urban tree species in Shenyang, China
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2019
Xinxin Zhao, Hongwei Yan, Min Liu, Lixing Kang, Jia Yu, Rui Yang
The urban forest is the green infrastructure of the city. Forest is important for preventing and controlling atmospheric pollution, as well as alleviating particulate air pollution (Chai, Zhu, and Han 2002; Mcdonald et al. 2007; Morales 2009). Forests absorb dust and remove pollutants, thereby improving air quality (Tallis et al. 2011). The concentrations of PM decreased by 9.1%, SO2 by 5.3%, and NO2 by 2.6% at a distance of 50–100 m into a forest compared to external urban woodlands (Yin et al. 2011). The adsorption capacity of PM2.5 per unit leaf area of Pinus tabulaeformis is 2.85 times that of Populus davidiana (Chen et al. 2016c). Urban trees occupy 11% of the Chicago area and remove about 234 tons of PM10 per year (Nowak 1994). Urban trees and shrubs in the United States remove about 215,000 tons of PM10 every year (Nowak, Crane, and Stevens 2006). Based on UK studies, Mcdonald et al. (2007) concluded that planting trees on one-quarter of the available urban area would reduce PM10 concentrations by 2–10%. Thus, urban forests can have a direct positive effect on human health. Wang et al. (2015) studied particle adsorption capacity of 10 species of evergreen trees in Beijing and reported that different tree species have different leaf surface adsorption capacities. The highest leaf surface adsorption capacity was determined for Cedrus (18.98 ± 0.71 μg· m−2) and the lowest was determined for Abies fabri (8.02 ± 0.04 μg· m−2). However, no reasons were given for the difference in PM adsorption capacity among tree species.
Urban forest restoration ecology: a review from Hamilton, New Zealand
Published in Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2019
Kiri Joy Wallace, Bruce D. Clarkson
Urban forests are distinctly different from rural forests both ecologically (eg greater fragmentation and non-native species pressure) and environmentally (eg urban heat island, higher pollution levels), and are more dynamic than rural forests (Groffman et al. 2016; Doroski et al. 2017). Unique challenges to urban forest restoration worldwide include the urban heat island effect (Samuel et al. 2016), fragmented city landscapes (Drinnan 2005; Clarkson et al. 2007c) and non-native species invasion (Trammell et al. 2012; La Sorte et al. 2014). Planted urban forests are therefore faced with additional pressures and require intensive management to return to a functional native state (Ruiz-Jaén and Aide 2006).