Neighbourhood character affects the spatial extent and magnitude of the functional footprint of urban green infrastructure
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Date
2020Author
Andersson, Erik
Haase, Dagmar
Scheuer, Sebastian
Wellmann, Thilo
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Show full item recordAbstract
Context Urban densification has been argued to
increase the contrast between built up and open green
space. This contrast may offer a starting point for
assessing the extent and magnitude of the positive
influences urban green infrastructure is expected to
have on its surroundings.
Objectives Drawing on insights from landscape
ecology and urban geography, this exploratory study
investigates how the combined properties of green and
grey urban infrastructures determine the influence of
urban green infrastructure on the overall quality of the
urban landscape.
Methods This article uses distance rise-or-decay
functions to describe how receptive different land
uses are to the influence of neighbouring green spaces,
and does this based on integrated information on urban
morphology, land surface temperature and habitat use
by breeding birds.
Results Our results show how green space has a nonlinear and declining cooling influence on adjacent
urban land uses, extending up to 300–400 m in
densely built up areas and up to 500 m in low density
areas. Further, we found a statistically significant
declining impact of green space on bird species
richness up to 500 m outside its boundaries.
Conclusions Our focus on land use combinations
and interrelations paves the way for a number of new
joint landscape level assessments of direct and indirect
accessibility to different ecosystem services. Our early
results reinforce the challenging need to retain more
green space in densely built up part of cities
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/34801https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-020-01039-z
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01039-z