Public open spaces are important places that can contribute to public health initiatives through facilitating leisure-time physical activity. Using the findings from 400 self-completed questionnaires ...of park visitors, this exploratory study examined people's use, perception and attitudes of a specific type of outdoor exercise equipment (in the form of a stretch station circuit) installed in an urban public park in a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. The data highlights that the equipment is positively perceived by existing park users in that it is seen to add value to the park and is a 'good investment' by their local government authority. Users of the equipment did enjoy it and wanted more installed. However, there appears to be little perceived benefit in terms of its contribution to the physical activity levels of park users, particularly with regard to a key target group - those people who engage in little leisure-time physical activity.
Urban areas concentrate more than 50% of the world’s population and are highly impacted by human activities, mainly due to high population density, directly affecting the micro-climate. In this ...sense, green infrastructures (GIs) have been pointed out to be helpful in mitigating these effects in large urban areas, where most of the studies were conducted. Therefore, this study evaluates the impacts on meteorological variables in a medium-sized city through the Weather Research and Forecasting model by implementing urban classes of Local Climate Zones (LCZ). Five urban parks and an urban lake were identified and expanded in the inner model grid to analyze the effects of GIs on meteorological variables in the urban environment. Results show that the 10 m wind speed can present an improvement for all statistical indices due to the better vertical representation of urban structures in the central urban area by the LCZ urban classes. In addition, green areas contributed locally to reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effects, resulting in cooling rates around these infrastructures. Compared to the lake, the use of the urban LCZ classes has proven to be an effective way to improve the representation of meteorological variables by a mesoscale weather model. Regarding GIs, this practice performs environmental services capable of mitigating the effects of UHI, sustaining the importance of these systems in urban projects, even for medium-sized cities. Finally, these findings provide support for public decision-makers in creating Master Plans for medium-sized cities regarding the implementation of GIs.
Global urbanization has resulted in local habitat fragmentation, influencing ecological processes and biodiversity conservation. However, little is known about the diversity and distribution of ...microbial communities across urban biotopes. Here, we compared testate amoeba communities in Moscow (63 samples from five urban parks) and Xiamen (69 samples from six urban parks) across four biotopes (tree hole, moss, soil, and sediment) to better understand microbial diversity and ecological processes shaping microbial communities. A total of 116 morphospecies (31 genera), corresponding to 90 in Moscow and 84 in Xiamen, were identified using light microscopy. The species richness per sample (mean ± standard error) was higher in Moscow parks (14 ± 1 species,
n
= 63) than Xiamen parks. The mean species richness per biotope was highest in the mosses (13 ± 1 species,
n
= 33). 13–26% of the total species richness was shared by all biotopes, indicating the ubiquitous distribution of testate amoeba morphospecies. The community composition in different biotopes markedly differed in both Moscow and Xiamen regions. Community connectivity varied among biotopes, and community complexity and dynamics were substantially stronger in soil and sediment. The stochastic processes explained a significantly high percentage of community composition in all biotopes (57–81%) in 11 parks. The standardized effect size for C-score in all biotopes changed from 1.48 to 6.92, indicating the enhanced significance of deterministic processes for the testate amoeba communities. The different relative importance of stochastic or deterministic processes in four studied biotopes suggests that factors influencing the testate amoeba communities greatly vary across heterogeneous urban environments.
HS99-501E (05-21), https://www.tdi.texas.gov/pubs/videoresource/t5flood .pdf (quotation); William Keith Guthrie, "Flood Alley: An Environmental History of Flooding in Texas" (Ph.D. dissertation, ...University of Kansas, 2006), 1-9; Victor R. Baker, Flood Hazards along the Balcones Escarpment in Central Texas: Alternative Approaches to Their Recognition, Mapping, and Management, Geological Circular 75-5 (Austin, 1975); Gene Fowler, Texas Storms: Stories of Raging Weather in the Lone Star State (Mankato, Minn., 2011), 8-10. ...as historian Craig E. Colten writes about the postbellum South, "The most common form of African American residential cluster was a bottomlands settlement near the city boundary. "4 Black migrants likewise settled in Austin's bottomlands; however, the most common nineteenth-century Black residential cluster in the city was a riparian settlement located along the winding floodplains of Austin's streams. Because of Waller Creek's location, three of Austin's earliest, densest, and most enduring postbellum Black enclaves developed along the waterway's lower downtown stretch, between the Colorado River and 19th Street (the city's original northern boundary). ...lower Waller Creek was a mixed-race "edge" in the ecological sense, where East and West Austin met, overlapped, and transitioned.5 It remained a racial boundary until the mid-1970s, when urban renewal displaced Black people from the waterway's main branch, shifting the color line to Austin's nearby downtown stretch of Interstate 35 (I-35).
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background Although the species-urban green area relationship (SARu) has been analyzed worldwide, the global consistency of its parameters, such as the fit and the slope of models, remains ...unexplored. Moreover, the SARu can be explained by 20 different models. Therefore, our objective was to evaluate which models provide a better explanation of SARus and, focusing on the power model, to evaluate the global heterogeneity in its fit and slope. Methods We tested the performance of multiple statistical models in accounting for the way in which species richness increases with area, and examined whether variability in model form was associated with various methodological and environmental factors. Focusing on the power model, we analyzed the global heterogeneity in the fit and slope of the models through a meta-analysis. Results Among 20 analyzed models, the linear model provided the best fit to the most datasets, was the top ranked model according to our efficiency criterion, and was the top overall ranked model. The Kobayashi and power models were the second and third overall ranked models, respectively. The number of green areas and the minimum number of species within a green area were the only significant variables explaining the variation in model form and performance, accounting for less than 10% of the variation. Based on the power model, there was a consistent overall fit (r.sup.2 = 0.50) and positive slope of 0.20 for the species richness increase with area worldwide. Conclusions The good fit of the linear model to our SARu datasets contrasts with the non-linear SAR frequently found in true and non-urban habitat island systems; however, this finding may be a result of the small sample size of many SARu datasets. The overall power model slope of 0.20 suggests low levels of isolation among urban green patches, or alternatively that habitat specialist and area sensitive species have already been extirpated from urban green areas. Keywords: Birds, Conservation macroecology, Habitat islands, Species-area relationships, Species-urban green area relationship, Urban parks, Urbanization
Urban green spaces have been increasingly evidenced to not only improve human health (both body and mind) and well-being but also promote a sustainable way of living for citizens as well as cities. ...These positive health and sustainable advantages have even greater impacts when applied to people with disabilities, which can ultimately evaluate their quality of life in the long run. Unfortunately, people with disabilities receive less attention and tend to be disregarded in terms of equal access to public facilities, health-related services, and opportunities in society. Therefore, this article emphasizes the value of having green spaces within cities and acknowledges how people with disabilities gain the benefits through active and passive methods as well as direct and indirect means at the global, population, and individual levels. With that, this article argues that urban green spaces or the development of sustainable urbanism must prioritize and include people with disabilities in the planning process, as this inclusive population has the greatest potential for advancing public resources (e.g., environmentally, socially, and economically) and moving cities closer to being truly sustainable.
Urban parks provide multiple ecosystem services as an important element of the urban space and improve human health and wellbeing. This study used the Gaussian-based 2SFCA method to evaluate the ...spatiotemporal distribution of and changes in park accessibility within the Sixth Ring Road in Beijing over 15 years. The study also used bivariate correlation analysis to analyze the relationship between urbanization factors and park access. The results showed that the overall park accessibility in both quantity and proximity had increased from 2000 to 2015, but there were still certain areas (percentage) that had limited access to parks. The inequity of distribution in park accessibility had been detected accompanying the rapid increase in park quantity in 2015. Furthermore, the development of urban parks mismatched that of urbanization in terms of urban land increase. The correlation between accessibility changes and population urbanization is not significant. Proper urban green space planning based on the distribution of population density and urban land use is indispensable in avoiding the aggravation of inequity in the process of urban expansion. This study contributes to the assessment of the current park allocation efficiency and helps urban planners and policymakers make prompt adjustments in the rapidly urbanizing process.
Egnaczak shares her experience of engaging her entire school community to create a garden as a public art work. The project involved Transplants: Mobile Pollination Unit, a mobile pollinator garden ...designed to attract bees, birds, and butterflies to Elm Park in Worcester MA. All levels of students were involved in the production of the mobile pollinator. Art class was a time for experimentation and inquiry around single-use plastics, weaving, and collaborative practice. Younger students developed dexterity and refinement skills while fashioning flowers from a variety of plastic bag scraps. Each student spiked mixed and matched layers of plastic onto pipe cleaners and trimmed them into delicate flowers. The flowers adorned the gardens in early spring when the plants were still green, bringing color and interest.
This article analyses the creation and implementation of two protected natural areas (PNA) in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It shows how this at once reveals both the social disparities in the urban ...evolution process and the potential for constructing the right to the city and the environment as a common good. The results of this process are conditional on balancing the main (often conflicting) goals of protected areas: nature conservation, public use and the land rights of local communities. Starting with a review of the literature on the relationship between the city and nature, the dichotomies and complementarities are presented between those two terms and the classification and designation criteria, which have given rise to a range of social representations, technical mechanisms and political effects in relation to the urban PNA.
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