Картографирование экосистемных услуг парковых зон Воркуты в целях совершенствования планировочных решений

Abstract

Urban green infrastructure development is one of the main ways to achieve sustainable development of cities. The most important role in this process belongs to park areas, squares, street landscaping, etc. This function is achieved due to presenting a wide range of ecosystem services: regulatory, supporting, information and provisioning. Studies of green infrastructure ecosystem services pools are of particular importance for cities of the Russian Federation Arctic Zone, whose population reaches 50–300 thousand people: Murmansk, Apatity, Vorkuta, Norilsk etc. Environmental and socio-economic characteristics of cities control the demand for certain services of their green infrastructure. This should be taken into account in municipal planning. Vorkuta parks were formed mainly on wasteland areas with willow thickets, swamps, ravines, etc., which were subsequently recultivated. Ecosystem services of five Vorkuta parks and their various combinations were considered. These combinations differ depending on the variations of geoecological characteristics of the park’s location. Such characteristics include the state of vegetation cover, location on a slope, presence of a water reservoir, position in relation to major highways, etc. The studied elements of Vorkuta green infrastructure have significant differences both in functional role and social value. T he priority ecosystem services of these territories are regulatory (filtration of polluted air, regulation and filtration of surface runoff, control of temperature regime of the permafrost layer covered by soils, erosion processes control, regulation of microclimate and noise pollution); informational (recreational, aesthetic, formation of a sense of place, etc.), to a lesser extent, due to the severity of natural conditions—supporting (biodiversity support, formation of biogeochemical cycles). The map “Ecosystem services of Vorkuta parks” was compiled based on territorial binding of priority ecosystem services.