Print PageUrban forest ecosystem services (ES) are ecological functions that are directly enjoyed, consumed, or used to produce specific, measurable human benefits and can have varying importance to humans. This concept is being used increasingly as a way to link ecosystem structure and function to people’s quality of life in cities. Analyzing the bundles of ecosystem services and disservice (ED) provided by urban forests can facilitate the development of management alternatives that maximize people’s overall quality of life in a city. This analysis can also make explicit the trade-offs associated with different management strategies that are necessary for the sustainable management of urban forests.
We developed indicators of urban forest ES and ED and weighted their relative importance. Vegetation and soils data, urban forest functional models, the literature, and spatial data were used to quantify regulation, production, information, and habitat ES groups for Gainesville, Florida, USA. Statistical analyses identified relationships between and within functional groups and indicators for ES and ED. Land cover classes were merged into urban, shrublands and forests to facilitate analyses of tradeoffs. Ecosystem service and disservice bundles were spatially analyzed according to functional groups and land cover classes. Geostatistial kriging mapped ES-ED and graphical analyses assessed tradeoffs.
Results/Conclusions
Seventeen ES and 4 ED indicators and their relative value were developed and spatially analyzed across Gainesville’s urban and peri-urban areas. There was an inverse relationship between the information and the production ES, due to higher amounts of biomass and tree cover that resulted in decreased indicator value for information ES. Interaction between pairs of ES showed that ES related with information ES were not related to other services, while the regulation ES (i.e. air quality and climate amelioration) were significantly related to other services. Geostatistical interpolation of plot data provided reliable estimates of ES indicators.
Analyses of ES-ED bundles showed that forested areas enhanced the habitat ES due to increased presence of native trees. Shrublands provide greater disturbance prevention ES and information ES were greater in urban areas due to higher real estate values and lower tree densities. Ecosystem disservices indicator values in urban area were greater due to a composition of ornamental trees that were allergenic and yielded fleshy fruits. Study methods and results can also be used to map, monitor, and evaluate the effects of urbanization, establish management goals, or to analyze the tradeoffs and the effects of different urban greening polices on well-being.
