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Land
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Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate...
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Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2024) | Viewed by 11276

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Nikolaos Proutsos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems, Hellenic Agricultural Organisation “DEMETER”, 11528 Athens, Greece
Interests: forest micrometeorology; agrometeorology; aridity; drought; crop water requirements
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alexandra D. Solomou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Forest Ecology, Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems, ELGO-DIMITRA, Athens, Terma Alkmanos, Ilisia, 11528 Athens, Greece
Interests: utilization and conservation of plant biodiversity; biodiversity indicators; environmental impacts and threats to biodiversity; restoring biodiversity; ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Urban Green Spaces (UGSs) are on the cutting edge of recent research, probably due to their ability to provide critical services for the citizens and improve their quality of life and public health. They are considered highly influential factors and effective means for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change impacts in the cities due to the vegetation’s ability to regulate the local climate. The incorporation of UGAs in the climate change strategies and governance in modern cities is adopted in many cases to adverse the urban heat island effect and is highly encouraged by many world authorities including the European Union.

However, our knowledge of the complex urban environment and its association with green infrastructure is extremely limited. The scientific results of several studies are, in many cases, contradicted underlining the need for further research and investigation. The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights into the impacts of green spaces in the urban environment and also to investigate the reverse effect of the climate and/or meteorological conditions on the growth and development of the urban vegetation on small or large time and spatial scales.

Studies (research articles, case studies, reviews or perspectives) focusing on the following (though not limited to) themes are highly encouraged for submission.

  • Monitoring of micrometeorological and weather attributes in and outside of the UGSs;
  • UGSs and droughts;
  • Characteristics and plant species selection for use to enhance urban green infrastructures;
  • Plant community composition and biodiversity patterns in urban areas;
  • Biodiversity conservation in urban environments;
  • Presentation of good practice paradigms;
  • Incorporation of nature-based solutions in urban areas;
  • Stability of UGAs based on their multiple purposes and their biodiversity;
  • Urban heat island (UHI) and urban cool island (UCI) effects in the urban environment;
  • Selection of natural and artificial climate-friendly or conventional materials in the UGSs;
  • Impact of UGASs on citizen thermal comfort or on the need for energy;
  • Ability of UGAs to infiltrate and store water and to prevent urban flooding phenomena;
  • Urban green infrastructures as measures for the mitigation and adaptation of climate change;
  • Impact of UGAs on public health;
  • Management techniques to enhance urban biodiversity and effectiveness of the UGAs;
  • Comparison of urban, suburban and forest natural ecosystems;
  • UGAs characteristics (size, species composition, water requirements, optical properties including albedo, canopy architecture, connectivity, plant density, maintenance) and indices;
  • UGAs association with climate governance in cities;
  • Public perceptions on UGAs and socioeconomic impacts, etc.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Nikolaos Proutsos
Dr. Alexandra D. Solomou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • urban green spaces
  • urban climate and climate change in cities
  • urban biodiversity, urban trees and vegetation management
  • meteorological monitoring of urban green areas
  • Urban Heat Island (UHI) and Urban Cool Island (UCI)
  • thermal comfort
  • natural and artificial climate-friendly materials
  • nature-based solutions and good practices in cities
  • plant species selection criteria in cities
  • water and maintenance requirements of urban vegetation

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 4605 KiB  
Article
Using Local Entropy Mapping as an Approach to Quantify Surface Temperature Changes Induced by Urban Parks in Mexico City
by Juan Manuel Núñez, Andrea Santamaría, Leonardo Avila and D. A. Perez-De La Mora
Land 2024, 13(10), 1701; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13101701 - 18 Oct 2024
Viewed by 526
Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms whereby parks contribute to cooling urban settings is critical to effectively addressing the challenges posed by rising temperatures in densely populated cities and ultimately improving the quality of urban life. This study employs a spatial approach with advanced analytical techniques, [...] Read more.
Understanding the mechanisms whereby parks contribute to cooling urban settings is critical to effectively addressing the challenges posed by rising temperatures in densely populated cities and ultimately improving the quality of urban life. This study employs a spatial approach with advanced analytical techniques, including local entropy mapping, to quantify surface temperature changes induced by urban parks across different geographical areas. Using satellite imagery to estimate land surface temperature (LST) during a heat wave in Mexico City, the study provides a practical approach to understanding the complex relationship between urban park size and urban heat island intensity within 300 m. The study’s findings indicate that while parks exert a cooling influence on their immediate vicinity, the extent of this effect varies spatially and depends on factors such as the size and location of the park and the nature of the surrounding terrain. Specifically, the results indicate that this relationship is not randomly distributed across the urban landscape. Instead, there is a clear pattern of spatial clustering within the city. Consequently, this research underlines the complexity of the problem, emphasizing the indispensable role of urban design and planning strategies to harness the full potential of parks as cooling agents within cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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32 pages, 7046 KiB  
Article
Urban Greening Management Arrangements between Municipalities and Citizens for Effective Climate Adaptation Pathways: Four Case Studies from The Netherlands
by Sara Romero-Muñoz, Teresa Sánchez-Chaparro, Víctor Muñoz Sanz and Nico Tillie
Land 2024, 13(9), 1414; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091414 - 2 Sep 2024
Viewed by 2005
Abstract
The transition towards nature-based cities has increasingly become a central focus in political–environmental agendas and urban design practices, aiming to enhance climate adaptation, urban biodiversity, spatial equilibrium, and social well-being as part of the ongoing socio-ecological urban transition process. Climate adaptation in cities [...] Read more.
The transition towards nature-based cities has increasingly become a central focus in political–environmental agendas and urban design practices, aiming to enhance climate adaptation, urban biodiversity, spatial equilibrium, and social well-being as part of the ongoing socio-ecological urban transition process. Climate adaptation in cities is a complex problem and one of the main collective challenges for society, but the relationships between city managers and citizens as to urban green care still face many challenges. Parks design guided by technical-expert and globalised criteria; inflexibility from bureaucratic inertia; and citizens’ demands to participate in the urban green transition, sometimes without the necessary knowledge or time, are some of the challenges that require further research. In this study, we examine four long-lasting approaches to green-space management in four cities in the Netherlands, ranging from municipality-driven to community-driven management forms, and encompassing diverse spatial configurations of greenery within the urban fabric. Utilising the theoretical lens of the Social–Ecological Systems Framework, we employ a multiple-case-study approach and ethnographic fieldwork analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the norms, collective-choice rules, and social conventions embodied in each urban green management arrangement. The purpose of this research is applied, that is, to provide urban managers and decision-makers with a deeper understanding of drivers to promote effective collaborative management approaches, focusing on specific organisational rules that may contribute to more sustained planning and maintenance pathways for urban green spaces, regardless of changes in political leadership or significant external funding sources. The results of the investigated cases show that long-lasting collaborative management of forests and parks has established a set of collective-choice rules for resource transfer between municipalities and citizens, including non-monetary resources (such as pruning-training courses or guided tours that attract tourists and researchers). Additionally, these arrangements have been favoured by the existence of legal norms that enable co-ownership of the land, and monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that offer a slightly different interpretation from the evidence identified so far in the scientific literature on collective resource management and organisational studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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22 pages, 5214 KiB  
Article
Understanding and Assessing Climate Change Risk to Green Infrastructure: Experiences from Greater Manchester (UK)
by Jeremy Carter, S.M. Labib and Ian Mell
Land 2024, 13(5), 697; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13050697 - 16 May 2024
Viewed by 1106
Abstract
The existing body of research into the environmental and socio-economic benefits of green infrastructure supports the case for it to be positioned as a form of critical infrastructure, particularly in urban settings. It is broadly recognized that extreme weather and climate change pose [...] Read more.
The existing body of research into the environmental and socio-economic benefits of green infrastructure supports the case for it to be positioned as a form of critical infrastructure, particularly in urban settings. It is broadly recognized that extreme weather and climate change pose significant risks to critical infrastructure systems linked to the provision of services, including electricity, water, communications, and transport, and consequently risk assessments and associated adaptation strategies are common practice. However, although green infrastructure is also at risk from extreme weather and climate change, threatening the realization of benefits that it can deliver in urban settings, associated risks to green infrastructure are not widely understood or assessed in practice. This paper discusses the status of existing research on this topic and uses this as a foundation for a Greater Manchester (UK) case study that assesses the risk of low water availability to grassed areas, which represent a key element of the city-region’s green infrastructure. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how risks linked to extreme weather and climate change can be assessed spatially to inform green infrastructure planning. In summary, this paper aims to raise awareness of extreme weather and climate change risk to urban green infrastructure, present an empirical case study and associated methodological approach on this topic, and ultimately support efforts to enhance the resilience of urban green infrastructure to extreme weather and climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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23 pages, 10717 KiB  
Article
Scenario Analysis of Green Infrastructure to Adapt Medium-Size Cities to Climate Change: The Case of Zaragoza, Spain
by Elie Hanna, María R. Felipe-Lucia and Francisco A. Comín
Land 2024, 13(3), 280; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13030280 - 23 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1425
Abstract
Planning a well-structured urban green infrastructure (UGI) is essential for cities to counteract the impacts of climate change. Soil carbon and air temperature differences between open and plant-covered sites were used as proxies of carbon sequestration (CS) and temperature regulation (TR) to evaluate [...] Read more.
Planning a well-structured urban green infrastructure (UGI) is essential for cities to counteract the impacts of climate change. Soil carbon and air temperature differences between open and plant-covered sites were used as proxies of carbon sequestration (CS) and temperature regulation (TR) to evaluate the current conditions of UGI in Zaragoza, a medium-sized city in northeastern Spain. Alternative scenarios were constructed, after a stakeholder consultation, at both city and municipal (city plus peri-urban zone) scales, extrapolating the highest values of CS and TR to two groups of UGI types grouped based on the state of their ecological functioning. We employed analysis of variance to compare mean values of CS and TR across diverse scenarios at both city and municipality scales. Statistically significant differences were found in city-scale and municipality-scale scenarios for both CS and TR. Multiplying CS by area did not show significant variation in city scale. Significant differences were found when multiplying TR by area at both scales, with exceptions in certain scenario combinations. These results suggest favoring the restoration of UGI sites in peri-urban zones (such as forests and steppe zones) to increase CS and those in densely urbanized zones (such as urban parks) to provide TR benefits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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16 pages, 5053 KiB  
Article
Climate Proofing Cities by Navigating Nature-Based Solutions in a Multi-Scale, Social–Ecological Urban Planning Context: A Case Study of Flood Protection in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden
by Colin Hultgren Egegård, Maja Lindborg, Åsa Gren, Lars Marcus, Meta Berghauser Pont and Johan Colding
Land 2024, 13(2), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13020143 - 26 Jan 2024
Viewed by 2459
Abstract
Due to unsustainable land management and climate change, floods have become more frequent and severe over the past few decades and the problem is exacerbated in urban environments. In the context of climate-proofing cities, the importance of nature-based solutions (NBSs), obtaining relevant outcomes [...] Read more.
Due to unsustainable land management and climate change, floods have become more frequent and severe over the past few decades and the problem is exacerbated in urban environments. In the context of climate-proofing cities, the importance of nature-based solutions (NBSs), obtaining relevant outcomes in the form of ecosystem services, has been highlighted. Although the role of ecosystem services in building resilience against negative climate change effects is widely recognized and there is an identified need to better integrate ecosystem services into urban planning and design, this has proven difficult to operationalize. A critical limitation is that modeling is a time-consuming and costly exercise. The purpose is to roughly estimate the ecosystem service of water run-off mitigation through simplified, cost-effective, and user-friendly modelling at three nested biophysical scales, under four climate change scenarios. Using the Swedish city of Gothenburg as an example, we propose an approach for navigating NBS-oriented flooding adaptation strategies, by quantifying the ecosystem service of water run-off mitigation at three nested biophysical scales, under four climate change scenarios, hence, proposing an approach for how to navigate nature-based solutions in a multi-scale, social–ecological urban planning context against present and future flooding events. Our findings validate the effectiveness of employing an ecosystem service approach to better comprehend the significant climate change issue of flooding through user-friendly and cost-efficient modeling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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23 pages, 16271 KiB  
Article
Urban Heat Island and Reduced Habitat Complexity Explain Spider Community Composition by Excluding Large and Heat-Sensitive Species
by Valentin Cabon, Hervé Quénol, Vincent Dubreuil, Aurélien Ridel and Benjamin Bergerot
Land 2024, 13(1), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13010083 - 11 Jan 2024
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2263
Abstract
Along with worldwide urbanization, upheavals in habitat and temperature are major threats for biodiversity. However, due to their interdependence, their relative roles as drivers of animal community composition remain entangled. Here, we investigated how taxonomic and functional compositions of arthropod communities were related [...] Read more.
Along with worldwide urbanization, upheavals in habitat and temperature are major threats for biodiversity. However, due to their interdependence, their relative roles as drivers of animal community composition remain entangled. Here, we investigated how taxonomic and functional compositions of arthropod communities were related to uncorrelated habitat and temperature gradients, and compared landscape (i.e., urbanization, Urban Heat Island (UHI)) to local variables (i.e., vegetation height and cover, near-ground temperature). We sampled 20,499 spiders (137 species) on 36 grasslands in Rennes (northwestern France). Unlike rural areas, urban sites were characterized by short vegetation and intense UHI, hosted species-poor communities, and were composed of small thermophilic species. UHI intensification and local loss of habitat complexity (short and dense vegetation) were associated with declining large and heat-sensitive species. These results highlight the prevalent role of urban warming, rather than land cover change, as an urban filter. Further, we show that landscape-scale UHI, not local temperature, filters species according to their functional attributes. UHI can therefore be considered as a thermal barrier, filtering species according to their physiological capacity to cope with urban thermal conditions. Finally, to counterbalance biotic homogenization, we argue for the importance of implementing complex habitat structures at the local scale within urban green infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Green Spaces: An Effective Tool to Regulate Urban Climate and Biodiversity)
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