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An evaluation of flood control and urban cooling ecosystem services delivered by urban green infrastructure

An evaluation of flood control and urban cooling ecosystem services delivered by urban green infrastructure
An evaluation of flood control and urban cooling ecosystem services delivered by urban green infrastructure
To inform planning decisions and address climate change impacts in expanding cities, it is desirable to quantify urban ecosystem services like flood control and urban cooling. By comparing with a purpose-built habitat map, this study ground-truthed a method to assess flood control, which was developed by Southampton City Council from surface maps. It was confirmed that infiltration capacity is a good proxy for flood control, leaf area index could represent urban cooling, and thereby both could be used to score urban surface types. A two-tiered system was proposed so that surface maps would be used for city-wide scale, and as they produce similar results that are more accurate at fine scales, habitat maps are used at site level. These surrogates were integrated to produce a Green Space Factor for flood control and urban cooling, wherein a combined score can be generated for particular locations. This could be extended further to include other ecosystem services. The new integrated multi-scale ecosystem service quantification tool could be used by developers and policy-makers to identify target areas in their projects and policies that could benefit from enhanced green infrastructure.
gis, urban cooling, ecosystem services, planning ecology, flood control, cities
2151-3732
136-145
Farrugia, Simon
d4d056f1-98f5-49ca-9b6e-e0ba3a77b809
Hudson, Malcolm D.
1ae18506-6f2a-48af-8c72-83ab28679f55
McCulloch, Lindsay
b577c904-fc3a-401c-ac5b-b7bc08a67edf
Farrugia, Simon
d4d056f1-98f5-49ca-9b6e-e0ba3a77b809
Hudson, Malcolm D.
1ae18506-6f2a-48af-8c72-83ab28679f55
McCulloch, Lindsay
b577c904-fc3a-401c-ac5b-b7bc08a67edf

Farrugia, Simon, Hudson, Malcolm D. and McCulloch, Lindsay (2013) An evaluation of flood control and urban cooling ecosystem services delivered by urban green infrastructure. International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services and Management, 9 (2), 136-145. (doi:10.1080/21513732.2013.782342).

Record type: Article

Abstract

To inform planning decisions and address climate change impacts in expanding cities, it is desirable to quantify urban ecosystem services like flood control and urban cooling. By comparing with a purpose-built habitat map, this study ground-truthed a method to assess flood control, which was developed by Southampton City Council from surface maps. It was confirmed that infiltration capacity is a good proxy for flood control, leaf area index could represent urban cooling, and thereby both could be used to score urban surface types. A two-tiered system was proposed so that surface maps would be used for city-wide scale, and as they produce similar results that are more accurate at fine scales, habitat maps are used at site level. These surrogates were integrated to produce a Green Space Factor for flood control and urban cooling, wherein a combined score can be generated for particular locations. This could be extended further to include other ecosystem services. The new integrated multi-scale ecosystem service quantification tool could be used by developers and policy-makers to identify target areas in their projects and policies that could benefit from enhanced green infrastructure.

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Published date: March 2013
Keywords: gis, urban cooling, ecosystem services, planning ecology, flood control, cities
Organisations: Civil Maritime & Env. Eng & Sci Unit

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 349898
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/349898
ISSN: 2151-3732
PURE UUID: 57cea612-6f32-40c3-9665-84353fea9600

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Date deposited: 20 Mar 2013 17:08
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 13:19

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Contributors

Author: Simon Farrugia
Author: Lindsay McCulloch

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