Understanding and improving nature-related educational ecosystem services in urban green spaces: Evidence from app-aided plant identification spatial-hotspots

Abstract

With the shortage of nature and the loss of biodiversity in cities, there is increasing interest in the use of urban green spaces (UGSs) to experience nature and carry out natural education. However, it is still unclear about how educational ecosystem service in UGSs to be used and by what landscape characteristics affected. Now there is an opportunity to quantify and map the nature-related educational ecosystem service by a plant identification app. We found the spatial hotspots of nature-related educational ecosystem service in UGSs and identified the educational sites as a non-dominant one and three dominant ones. Based on the assessment of spatial structure and functional indicators of UGSs, results of the regression models revealed that the plant biodiversity contributed to >60% of relative effect estimates on educational ecosystem service. There were six plant biodiversity indicators (abundance and species richness of ornamental herbs and shrubs, abundance of trees and species richness of herbs) and two accessible indicators (road density and distance to entrance) having significant effects, and one non-significant facility and attraction indicator (POI (Point of Interest) Density) contributing to >13% of relative estimates on educational ecosystem service. Based on inspirations of these results, an evidence-based design practice streamline was proposed to enhance educational ecosystem services and improve activities of learning nature. It is expected to contribute to the integration of natural education into residents’ daily life with benefits on human well-being and biodiversity protection.