•The ES of climate regulation provided by GI has been analyzed in Rome, Italy.•A UHI phenomenon is evident in Rome during the hot Mediterranean summer conditions.•Cooling capacity differs between ...peri-urban forest, urban forest and street trees.•NDVI and the surface covered by trees are the main indicators of this ES.•Specific GI management policies are required in Mediterranean cities.
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is one of the main environmental impacts of urbanization, affecting directly human health and well-being of the city dwellers, and also contributing to worsen environmental quality. As a key strategy to address sustainable urban development, the EU has advocated the development of Nature-Based solutions, such as the implementation of Green Infrastructure (GI), which can deliver a wide range of Regulating Ecosystem Services (ES). In this article, the ES of climate regulation provided by GI has been analyzed in the Municipality of Rome, Italy, characterized by a complex territory and by a Mediterranean climate. The methodological approach allowed to characterize the UHI and to analyze its features in a spatially explicit way and on a seasonal basis, through the Land Surface Temperature (LST) derived from Landsat-8 data. The cooling capacity of different GI elements (peri-urban forest, urban forest, street trees), as well as the effect of vegetation cover and tree diversity on the provision of this regulating ES were assessed. The results show that GI significantly mitigates the hot urban climate during summer, with an effect that is dependent on the GI element and the environmental constrains to which it is exposed. NDVI and tree cover resulted the main indicators of the provision of the ES of climate regulation, highlighting that GI elements such as urban and peri-urban forests have the highest potential to provide this ES in a Mediterranean city. In the context of the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) process, our results lend support to claims that GI is important for an ecosystem-based climate adaptation strategy in urban environments, contributing to the definition of knowledge based criteria and indicators, relevant for decision-making in Mediterranean cities.
This paper describes the public archaeology approach and placemaking experiment at the Etruscan and Roman site of Podere Cannicci in Tuscany (Italy), drawing from the previous experience at three ...other archaeological sites along the Tyrrhenian coast. After three years of excavations at the IMPERO Project (Interconnected Mobility of People and Economy along the River Ombrone), the team has begun a side project to develop new strategies for communicating the results of the research. These include, but are not limited to, an app which displays augmented reality and 3D reconstructions of both the site and the material culture. The project uses digital narratives to engage local communities and scholars in the interpretation and reconstruction of ancient landscapes along with the middle valley of the Ombrone river. This approach also has the potential to support and sustain local tourism, providing an original experience for visitors. Moreover, the solution allows people from all over the world to be connected with the ongoing research and its results, as everything will be published on a dedicated website.
Ecosystem services delivered by natural ecosystems are increasingly important for climate change adaptation and mitigation and play a huge role in biodiversity conservation. For this reason, the EU ...has the ambitious goal of protecting at least 30% of land by 2030. Member states are called to improve and expand the network of protected areas within the next few years; to do so, scientific studies aimed at identifying areas with high ecological value, as well as at defining best management practices, are highly needed. In this study, we used the InVEST suite of models to spatially assess three regulating ecosystem services, that is, carbon storage, seasonal water yield, and urban flood risk mitigation in three administrative regions of central Italy. Using overlay analysis, we found areas with the highest delivery in each of the considered ESs; based on these findings, we eventually proposed four new protected areas, which combine for 888 km2, that is, 2.73% of the study area. Interestingly, each of the newly proposed protected areas has somehow been discussed and hypothesized by stakeholders, but only one is presumably going to be part of the national network of protected areas within the next years. Hopefully, by prioritizing areas according to the production of ecosystem services, this study can be intended as a step towards the systematic inclusion of ecosystem services studies for enhancing the network of areas under national protection schemes and achieving the goal of protecting at least 30% of land in Europe by 2030.
•Operationalisation of ESs framework was assessed through supply-demand indices.•Seasonal analysis of air quality regulation mismatch in four Italian Municipalities.•Green Cover and functional ...diversity highlight city-specific concerns.•Urban settlement can be used as a common indicator of mismatch.
Cities are nowadays facing compelling environmental and climatic challenges that threaten human health and well-being; for this reason, enhancing their sustainability and resilience has rapidly ascended to the top of the global and regional political Agenda. The Urban Green Infrastructure represents a key factor in enhancing the environmental quality of cities, and its planning should be steered by a scientifically-sound operationalisation of the Ecosystem Services concept. In this work, we assess the Ecosystem Services mismatch for air quality regulation in four Italian Municipalities (Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Bari), considering the O3 and PM10 pollution; the study frames a geographical gradient (North-South) and has been conducted on a seasonal basis. We propose a composite-indicatorbased approach for estimating the supply and demand of said Ecosystem Services, including the dimensions of air quality and human health, using both geospatial and tabular data. The spatial and temporal features of mismatch allow distinguishing concerns depending on vegetation quantity (green space areas) and quality (functional diversity), structure of urban settlements and cross-cutting criticalities among cities, and to highlight common indicators of mismatch and priority areas for upcoming interventions.
We found that northern cities (Milan and Bologna) suffer a high mismatch, as a result of poor air quality and limited vegetation abundance and functional diversity; southern cities experienced lower demand related to air quality; however, the high mismatch is driven by urban settlement structure and population vulnerability. We also found that compact urbanisation, namely dense urban fabric and the increasing buildings’ height, is linked to a marked mismatch regardless of the city’s dimension and geographical location.
We believe such an effort is a fundamental step for translating the Ecosystem Services conceptual framework into the development plans of cities, and thus into concrete actions.
Plus, as far as we know, this is one of the first studies explicitly linking urban structure indicators (e.g. building heights and compactness of the urban settlements) to the Ecosystem Services’ mismatch.
•Urban and peri-urban forests enhance the provision of regulating Ecosystem Services.•PM10 and O3 removal by urban green areas was modeled in the Municipality of Ferrara.•UGI annually remove 19.8Mg ...PM10 and 8.6 Mg O3, corresponding to € 2.12 million and € 147*103.•Reforesting current UGI would increase removal values by 49% for PM10 and 18% for O3.
Air pollution is a serious concern for human health and is even more worrying in areas that are known to be “pollution hotspots”, such as the Po Plain in northern Italy. The Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI), which includes urban and peri-urban forests, enhances human health and wellbeing delivering a wide range of ecosystem services, including air quality improvement. In this research, we analyzed, in biophysical and monetary terms, the role of the UGI in removing PM10 and O3 from the atmosphere in the Municipality of Ferrara using established removal models. We used a multiscale approach that includes geospatial data, field sampling and laboratory analysis. Then, using a local green areas database, we located public areas that could potentially undergo forestation actions without requiring any land conversion and evaluated the benefit in terms of ESs provision that these actions may exert. We found that, in 2019, the UGI in the Municipality of Ferrara removed about 19.8 Mg of PM10 and 8.6 Mg of O3, for a monetary benefit of € 2.12 million € and 147*103 respectively. We then identified about 121 ha within the urban core of the Municipality that could potentially be forested. Such an action would increase the PM10 and O3 removal by about 49% and 18%, respectively. Our findings comply with the EU Biodiversity strategy for 2030, which calls for the development of an ambitious greening plan for cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants.
Background
Leaf area index (LAI) is a key indicator for the assessment of the canopy’s processes such as net primary production and evapotranspiration. For this reason, the LAI is often used as a key ...input parameter in ecosystem services’ modeling, which is emerging as a critical tool for steering upcoming urban reforestation strategies. However, LAI field measures are extremely time-consuming and require remarkable economic and human resources. In this context, spectral indices computed using high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery like Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8, may represent a feasible and economic solution for estimating the LAI at the city scale. Nonetheless, as far as we know, only a few studies have assessed the potential of Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 data doing so in Mediterranean forest ecosystems. To fill such a gap, we assessed the performance of 10 spectral indices derived from Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 data in estimating the LAI, using field measurements collected with the LI-COR LAI 2200c as a reference. We hypothesized that Sentinel-2 data, owing to their finer spatial and spectral resolution, perform better in estimating vegetation’s structural parameters compared to Landsat 8.
Results
We found that Landsat 8-derived models have, on average, a slightly better performance, with the best model (the one based on NDVI) showing an
R
2
of 0.55 and NRMSE of 14.74%, compared to
R
2
of 0.52 and NRMSE of 15.15% showed by the best Sentinel-2 model, which is based on the NBR. All models were affected by spectrum saturation for high LAI values (e.g., above 5).
Conclusion
In Mediterranean ecosystems, Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 data produce moderately accurate LAI estimates during the peak of the growing season. Therefore, the uncertainty introduced using satellite-derived LAI in ecosystem services’ assessments should be systematically accounted for.
•ES provision improves outside the urban cores and along the urban–rural gradients.•ES coldspots are consistently found inside capital municipalities.•In four MCs all four ESs form synergies and are ...provided as a bundle.•Greening should target protected areas inside coldspots.•Interventions should be aimed at increasing connectivity between hotspots.
Over the last decades, the environmental burden borne by natural ecosystems to sustain life in urban areas has considerably increased. For this reason, the network of interconnected green areas and features, referred to as Urban Green Infrastructure, is increasingly being promoted as a valuable means to enhance the life quality of city dwellers by providing Ecosystem Services.
We present a spatial analysis of Ecosystem Services provision and synergies/trade-offs along the urban–rural gradient for the following Italian coastal Metropolitan cities: Genoa, Rome, Bari, Naples, Cagliari, Reggio Calabria and Palermo. We focused our attention on three macro classes of human-induced environmental pressures that are particularly critical to the quality of life in urban contexts, namely air pollution, Urban Heat Island effect, and alteration of the water cycle.
We found that all of the selected Ecosystem Services, besides a few exceptions, are provided as a bundle, which means they appear together repeatedly, forming an association. On average, the Ecosystem Services provision grows at comparable paces moving from the inner urban core towards the peri-urban and rural areas. As a consequence, most densely urbanized areas were found to be Ecosystem Services coldspots compared to peri-urban and rural areas.
This study is the follow up of the URBAN-MAES pilot implemented in the framework of the EnRoute project. The study aims at mapping and assessing the process of particulate matter (PM10) and ...tropospheric ozone (O3) removal by various forest and shrub ecosystems. Different policy levels and environmental contexts were considered, namely the Metropolitan city of Rome and, at a wider level, the Latium region. The approach involves characterization of the main land cover and ecosystems using Sentinel-2 images, enabling a detailed assessment of Ecosystem Service (ES), and monetary valuation based on externality values. The results showed spatial variations in the pattern of PM10 and O3 removal inside the Municipality and in the more rural Latium hinterland, reflecting the spatial dynamics of the two pollutants. Evergreen species displayed higher PM10 removal efficiency, whereas deciduous species showed higher O3 absorption in both rural and urban areas. The overall pollution removal accounted for 5123 and 19,074 Mg of PM10 and O3, respectively, with a relative monetary benefit of 161 and 149 Million Euro for PM10 and O3, respectively. Our results provide spatially explicit evidence that may assist policymakers in land-oriented decisions towards improving Green Infrastructure and maximizing ES provision at different governance levels.
In March 2021, following some agricultural activities on a slight relief in the area of Civitella Paganico, the remains of a second century B.C.E. burial were excavated by the research team of the ...IMPERO Project (Interconnected Mobility of People and Economies along the River Ombrone). This paper details the results of the rescue excavations and presents the preliminary data on the nearby settlement of Podere Cannicci to contextualize its necropolis. Finally, the paper addresses some initial thoughts on the broader importance of the discovery in terms of settlement networks and spheres of cultural influences in this liminal area.
•Mismatch of Regulating Ecosystem Services varies considerably in the city structure.•Urban planning strategies generally do not consider the Ecosystem Services mismatch.•Mapping priority areas helps ...to exploit the multifunctionality of Ecosystem Services.•Green Infrastructure also provides important economic benefits to the society.•Targeted urban planning improves human health and well-being.
Balancing the ecosystem service (ES) mismatch should be a goal of sustainable urban planning. However, (i) many urban areas lack an assessment of this mismatch and (ii) scientific findings are not easily translatable into good practices. In this study, we assessed the mismatch for two regulating ESs—regulation of air quality (intended as PM10 removal by vegetation) and urban temperature regulation—in the Municipality of Rome (Italy). The spatial distribution of the ES mismatch was then used to identify priority intervention areas (PIAs), namely those that would benefit the most from targeted urban planning. To do so, we computed composite indicators of supply and demand for each ES, adopting a process-based approach. Additionally, a monetary valuation of the related benefits associated with urban green infrastructure is provided. Our findings suggest that regulation of air quality falls short in highly urbanized areas, whereas a mismatch in urban temperature regulation is observed in both highly urbanized areas and some agricultural lands. The majority of the PIAs fall in the eastern and southern sectors of the Municipality of Rome. Our findings also indicate that urban planning should consider urban regeneration practices and reforestation of existing green areas within the PIAs. Sustainable urban planning can produce remarkable environmental benefits, as estimated, for the Municipality of Rome, up to several hundred million euros per year, depending on the methodology used for the monetary valuation.
PDF
