Assessing the ecosystem services provided by urban green spaces along urban center-edge gradients

Jie Chang,Kaixuan Pan,Yuan Ren,Guofu Yang,Zelong Qu,Ronghua Xu,Bin Xu,Yong Min,Ying Ge

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-11559-5

Jie Chang, Kaixuan Pan + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11559-5

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Abstract

Urban green spaces provide various ecosystem services, especially cultural services. Previous assessment methods depend either on hypothetic payments for ecosystems or real payments not directly related to ecosystems. In this paper, we established a method for assessing the cultural ecosystem services in any location in urban area using only two variables, green space (ecosystem) and land rent (real payment). We integrated the cultural and the regulating services into the total ecosystem services because urban green spaces provide almost no provisioning services. Results showed that the same area of green spaces near the center provided much higher cultural services than that near the urban edge; the regulating services accounted for 5% to 40% of the total ecosystem services from the center to the edge of urban area; along the center-edge gradient, there was a threshold out which the ecosystem services were lower than the maintenance cost of green spaces.

Highlights

Urban green spaces are expanding faster than the population that is quickly increasing in urban areas in recent decades[1, 2]
We developed a method that we called the land rent method (LRM) to measure the real payment based on the ecosystems to analyze the ecosystem services across the entire urban area (Fig. 2)
According to the LRM, the cultural services of green spaces in a specific location are determined by the coverages of green spaces and the land rent in the location

Summary

Introduction

Urban green spaces are expanding faster than the population that is quickly increasing in urban areas in recent decades[1, 2]. The major one is the hedonic pricing method (HPM) based on real payment of the selling price of houses near the green spaces[18, 19]. The regulating services and cultural services in each location were further integrated into the total ecosystem services, which were used for the cost-benefit analysis of green spaces in any location across the urban area. People perceive the cultural services[6] and a few regulating services (such as microclimate regulation and noise mitigation) directly, and the cultural services should be the major feedback variable for whether the public supports urban green spaces or not[8]. The action-oriented framework[21] that combines cultural services and regulating services as the total ecosystem services of green spaces can explain the self-organization mechanism of a city

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion