Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) concluded that 60 per cent of ecosystem services are eroded or used unsustainably The observed rapid erosion of the ability of ecosystems to generate services not only demand better understanding of the ecological foundation, but also requires that this knowledge is put into a broad institutional and governance context (TEEB 2010). Today, especially cities are facing enormous challenges as urban landscapes are also the everyday environment for the majority of the global population. The continuous increase in the number and size of urban regions, and the ensuing transformation of landscapes on different scales, pose great challenges for reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity and for ensuring human welfare. With respect to these challenges URBES will have a focus on functional diversity, urban ecosystem services, institutions, economics and resilience science. To achieve the ambitious goals of URBES, the research is organized in four different clusters addressing the most pressing research questions in the field in an interdisciplinary way: Cluster I: Urban Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Land Use Cluster II. Valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services Cluster III. Governance and management of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services Cluster IV: Communication and training International initiatives like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB 2010) have all emphasized the urgent need to improve our capacity to integrate market and non market values of biodiversity into economic accounts and decision support tools. The main focus of the Austrian subproject lies in the non-monetary valuation of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore a non-monetary valuation methodology will be developed by combining quantitative and "soft" qualitative indicators and criteria as well as indicators for ecological, environmental and social services. Moreover, the research means to bridge the gap between ecological and social indicators as well as the gap between theory and practice. A number of existing approaches to evaluation will be tested in the case studies (Salzburg, Berlin, Stockholm and Rotterdam). References Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being. Island Press, Washington D.C. TEEB 2010. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature: A synthesis of the approach, conclusions and recommendations of TEEB. www.teebweb.org

The URBES project (Urban biodiversity and ecosystem services) aims to implement the concept of ecosystem services (ES) in an urban context. Thus a methodology has been developed to analyze and assess ES. Priority is given to large scale analyses to build an approach that is useful to urban planning on specific sites within a city. Use of the given approach enables to assess the influence of existing and land covers and planned land cover changes (e.g. buildings, traffic areas and vegetation structures) regarding the self-regulatory properties of cities for microclimate regulation, air purification, stormwater regulation but also for socio cultural challenges like learning from nature and recreational use of green spaces. For investigations representative sites have been chosen, which can be seen as opposing pairs of high green and heavily sealed areas as well as high dense and low dense built-up areas. Results clearly show that cities are able for self-regulatory purposes. All structural elements within a site cause either a demand (e.g. non-greened buildings, sealed surfaces) for or a supply (green roofs, lawns, trees) of ecosystem services. A balance of supply and demand is possible even in residential and commercial areas. The biggest issue thus is the degree of greening. The higher the shares of green, the better are the properties for ES provision. Nevertheless a high ES provision is also possible in high dense built-up areas. Thus the density is of less importance than the share of green and especially the quality of green. Trees and shrubs are way better regarding e.g. microclimate regulation and air purification than lawn. Its often not the diversity of different vegetation structures that counts, but their quality regarding specific purposes. This project provides a tool set to exactly define the properties of specific structures and to help to meet supply and demand of and for ecosystem services in an urban context. Regarding socio-cultural aspects like recreation results show the outstanding importance of open green spaces (especially parks) for local recreation of urban dwellers. Here the most important issue is not only the proximity of green spaces but especially their design. Open green spaces have to facilitate a multitude of active and passive relaxation purposes.