Příklady dobré praxe

Příklady uplatnění multifunkčního ozeleňování městského prostředí jsou sestaveny z případových a hodnotících studií. Hodnotící studie se zabývají na jedné straně efektivním plánováním ozeleňování, na druhé straně metodami monitoringu vývoje zeleně. Vybrané případové studie ukazují výsledky konkrétních projektů ve městech, které zohledňují strukturu, prostorové uspořádání a funkce zeleně v oblasti zlepšení kvality ovzduší a adaptace na klimatickou změnu.

What are the health and social benefits from protected areas and wider green infrastructure in terms of air pollution and heat stress?
Are there any good examples of these benefits (and their values) across Europe?
Who has driven this practice? What tools and measures have enabled progress?
To what extent are the experiences replicable and transferable across issues and across Europe?

Management and maintenance incorporates good practices considering biodiversity, Including shrubs and dry herbaceous layers, Less pruning, more bio mass in street-trees, Achieve a more abundant, mature and stratified vegetation, Improve habitats in parks and gardens introducing species to attract native fauna (pollinators, birds).

Stuttgart’s location in a valley basin, its mild climate, low wind speeds, industrial activity and high volume of traffic has made it susceptible to poor air quality. Development on the valley slopes has prevented air from moving through the city, which worsens the air quality and contributes to the urban heat island effect. A Climate Atlas was developed for the Stuttgart region, presenting the distribution of temperature and cold air flows according to the city’s topography and land use. Based on this information, a number of planning and zoning regulations are recommended that also aim to preserve and increase open space in densely built-up areas.

Urban forests provide important ecosystem services, such as urban air quality improvement by removing pollutants. While robust evidence exists that plant physiology, abundance, and distribution within cities are basic parameters affecting the magnitude and efficiency of air pollution removal, little is known about effects of plant diversity on the stability of this ecosystem service. Here, by means of a spatial analysis integrating system dynamic modeling and geostatistics, we assessed the effects of tree diversity on the removal of tropospheric ozone (O₃) in Rome, Italy, in two years (2003 and 2004) that were very different for climatic conditions and ozone levels. Different tree functional groups showed complementary uptake patterns, related to tree physiology and phenology, maintaining a stable community function across different climatic conditions. Our results, although depending on the city-specific conditions of the studied area, suggest a higher function stability at increasing diversity levels in urban ecosystems. In Rome, such ecosystem services, based on published unitary costs of externalities and of mortality associated with O₃, can be prudently valued to roughly US$2 and $3 million/year, respectively. © 2012 by the Ecological Society of America.

While technological progress has fostered the conception of an urban society that is increasingly decoupled from ecosystems, demands on natural capital and ecosystem services keep increasing steadily in our urbanized planet. Decoupling of cities from ecological systems can only occur locally and partially, thanks to the appropriation of vast areas of ecosystem services provision beyond the city boundaries. Conserving and restoring ecosystem services in urban areas can reduce the ecological footprints and the ecological debts of cities while enhancing resilience, health, and quality of life for their inhabitants. In this paper we synthesize knowledge and methods to classify and value ecosystem services for urban planning. First, we categorize important ecosystem services and disservices in urban areas. Second, we describe valuation languages (economic costs, socio‐cultural values, resilience) that capture distinct value dimensions of urban ecosystem services. Third, we identify analytical challenges for valuation to inform urban planning in the face of high heterogeneity and fragmentation characterizing urban ecosystems. The paper discusses various ways through which urban ecosystems services can enhance resilience and quality of life in cities and identifies a range of economic costs and socio‐cultural impacts that can derive from their loss. We conclude by identifying knowledge gaps and challenges for the research agenda on ecosystem services provided in urban areas.

Communities of all sizes and in all climates are using green infrastructure to manage stormwater where it falls using the natural processes associated with soils and vegetation to capture, slow down, and filter runoff, often allowing it to recharge ground water. Green infrastructure manages stormwater to control flooding from small storms and improve water quality and offers a wide range of other environmental, economic, public health, and social benefits. This publication is those who help shape redevelopment projects in downtowns and infill locations where development has already occurred. It provides inspiration and helps identify successful strategies and lessons learned for overcoming common barriers to using green infrastructure in these contexts.

i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban and community forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. The i-Tree tools help communities of all sizes to strengthen their urban forest management and advocacy efforts by quantifying the environmental services that trees provide and assessing the structure of the urban forest.

i-Tree has been used by communities, non-profit organizations, consultants, volunteers, and students to report on the urban forest at all scales from individual trees to parcels, neighborhoods, cities, and entire states. By understanding the local, tangible ecosystem services that trees provide, i-Tree users can link urban forest management activities with environmental quality and community livability. Whether your interest is a single tree or an entire forest, i-Tree provides baseline data that you can use to demonstrate value and set priorities for more effective decision-making.

Developed by USDA Forest Service and numerous cooperators, i-Tree is in the public domain and available by request through the i-Tree website (www.itreetools.org). The Forest Service, Davey Tree Expert Company, the Arbor Day Foundation, Society of Municipal Arborists, the International Society of Arboriculture, and Casey Trees have entered into a cooperative partnership to further develop, disseminate, and provide technical support for the suite.

Urban vegetation affects air quality through influencing pollutant deposition and dispersion. Both processes are described by many existing models and experiments, on-site and in wind tunnels, focussing e.g. on urban street canyons and crossings or vegetation barriers adjacent to traffic sources. There is an urgent need for well-structured experimental data, including detailed empirical descriptions of parameters that are not the explicit focus of the study.

This review revealed that design and choice of urban vegetation is crucial when using vegetation as an ecosystem service for air quality improvements. The reduced mixing in trafficked street canyons on adding large trees increases local air pollution levels, while low vegetation close to sources can improve air quality by increasing deposition. Filtration vegetation barriers have to be dense enough to offer large deposition surface area and porous enough to allow penetration, instead of deflection of the air stream above the barrier. The choice between tall or short and dense or sparse vegetation determines the effect on air pollution from different sources and different particle sizes.

In 2011, the Camden SMART Initiative was formed to develop a comprehensive network of green and grey infrastructure programs and projects as a means to alleviate recurring flooding events, improve water quality, and restore and revitalize the City’s neighborhoods. Formed as a public-private collaboration, its members include the City of Camden, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership, the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program, the New Jersey Tree Foundation, and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

With Camden’s future tied to the environmental and economic health of the region, sustainability is a fundamental component of the city’s revitalization strategy. The Camden SMART Initiative has taken the lead on implementing numerous green infrastructure projects that serve to improve the City’s overall sustainability by: improving air, water, and climate quality; preventing neighborhood flooding and reducing combined sewer overflows; developing environmental policy; creating sustainable green jobs; adding recreational amenities and open space; providing economic development opportunities; beautifying neighborhoods; and increasing property values. This handbook is intended to further Camden SMART’s effort by providing residents, builders, city and county staff, and other interested groups with practical, state-of-the-art information on integrating low impact development design strategies and green infrastructure practices within the City of Camden.

This green infrastructure handbook is broken down as follows. Section One defines green infrastructure and identifies the multiple benefits it proves, while Section Two provides examples of green stormwater infrastructure tools - from the rooftop to the street - that are applicable to the City of Camden. Section Three shows how these tools can be used within new development and retrofit projects within the City of Camden.

This plan has been prepared under the guidance of the Cooper’s Ferry Partnership as part of the US EPA Green Infrastructure Community Partnership for targeted technical assistance.

Investing into green infrastructure makes sound economic sense — a single area of land can offer multiple benefits, provided its ecosystems are in a healthy condition. Such healthy ecosystems, which are powered by the diversity of life within them, provide society with a stream of valuable, economically important goods and services such as clean water and air, carbon storage, pollination, etc. They also play a central role in fighting climate change impacts by protecting against floods and other environmental disasters. This report introduces the general concept of green infrastructure and explains its relationship to Natura 2000, the EU-wide network of protected areas spanning all 28 EU countries. The report also presents a number of case studies and outlines the EU`s Green Infrastructure Strategy.

The major cities demonstrate varying levels of effort in promoting green infrastructure. Leading cities such as Philadelphia and New York City have proven that sustainable practices produce both environmental and economic benefits. More recently, Chicago and Washington D.C. have introduced progressive green infrastructure plans. However, some of the largest cities across the US still rely almost exclusively on conventional grey infrastructure. As seen in the summary matrix in Table 1, cities such as Houston or San Antonio that receive high amounts of precipitation and have high potential for green infrastructure solutions are not using alternative green strategies. All cities assessed in this report have potential for growth and improvement concerning sustainable solutions. No US city is 100% proficient in the field of green infrastructure. For example, the overlap of multiple departments and programs can cause political noise, bureaucratic challenges, and undermine or obstruct progress. Establishing a common goal with quantitative defined objectives is a key first step towards developing successful green infrastructure projects. Annual reports are critical to conveying progress to local residents, and provide data for other municipal leaders to learn from successful strategies and initiatives. To be sure, the learning curve of understanding and implementing green infrastructure is still high, with significant advances in methods and management yet to come.

In an increasingly urbanized world, air pollution mitigation is considered one of most important issues in city planning. Urban trees help to improve air quality by facilitating widespread deposition of various gases and particles through the provision of large surface areas as well as through their influence on microclimate and air turbulence. However, many of these trees produce wind-dispersed pollen (a known allergen) and emit a range of gaseous substances that take part in photochemical reactions – all of which can negatively affect air quality. The degree to which these air-quality impacts are manifested depends on species-specific tree properties: that is, their “traits”. We summarize and discuss the current knowledge on how such traits affect urban air pollution. We also present aggregated traits of some of the most common tree species in Europe, which can be used as a decision-support tool for city planning and for improving urban air-quality models.

Understanding an urban forest’s structure, function, and value can promote management decisions that will improve environmental quality and human health. Using i-Tree Eco software and its sampling and data collection protocol, an assessment of the baseline condition, ecological function, and value of the urban forests in Scotlandville (Louisiana, USA) was conducted during 2014. A stratified (by land use type) random sample plot map of the town was generated. Data from 170 field plots located throughout Scotlandville were collected, including tree species, diameter at breast height, total tree height, height to live top, height to crown base, crown width, crown dieback, crown light exposure, percent impervious surface under the tree, and direction and distance to building. Data were then entered into i-Tree Eco v5.0 and analyzed. Modeling results indicated that there are a total of 31 species and an estimated 239,000 trees in Scotlandville with a tree canopy cover of 23.7 percent; the three most common species are Black willow (Salix nigra), Water oak (Quercus nigra), and American elm (Ulmus americana); the overall tree density is 77 trees per hectare and trees with diameters of more than 15 cm (6 inches) constitute 56.5% of the population. The model estimated that annually, the urban forests in Scotlandville remove 96 tons of air pollutants; gross sequestration is about 3,880 tons of carbon and net carbon sequestration is about 3,650 tons. Each year, trees in Scotlandville are estimated to store 88,700 tons of carbon, produce 9,720 tons of oxygen, reduce runoff by 121,200 m³, reduce energy-related costs by $324,000 USD, and provide an additional $52,595 in value by reducing the amount of carbon released by power plants (a reduction of 739 tons of carbon emissions). The structural value for Scotlandville community forest is estimated at $185 million and the annual ecological functional value is estimated at 9 million USD. These results provide baseline information for management recommendations to maximize the ecological benefits provided by trees.

Every urban landscape is significantly different from any other environment. These urban landscapes having green spaces decreased are mainly made of artificial surfaces which have unique physical attributes unlike any other landscape surface. The combination of dominant artificial surfaces and decreased vegetation creates an urban climate which influences the air quality, outdoor thermal and human comfort. Although, half of the Earths population live in cities, the importance of urban air quality and climate issues do not have a high impact on urban planning processes despite the fact that urban weather and climate is essential for human well-being. The main objective with the present study is to investigate how urban green spaces impact on the air quality and the microclimate in cities. Each section examines an urban climatic process and how this process differs in an urban environment which includes vegetation. The final section discusses how urban green spaces can help ease the local consequences of climate change.

We explored Google Street View (GSV) as a street-level, urban greenery assessment tool. Street-level greenery has long played a critical role in the visual quality of urban landscapes. This living landscape element can and should be assessed for the quality of visual impact with the GSV information, and the assessed street-level greenery information could be incorporated into urban landscape planning and management. Information on street-level views of urban greenery assessment, however, is rare or nonexistent. Planners and managers’ ability to plan and manage urban landscapes effectively and efficiently is, therefore, limited. GSV is one tool that might provide street-level, profile views of urban landscape and greenery, yet no research on GSV for urban planning seems available in literature. We modified an existing Green View Index (GVI) formula and conducted a case study assessment of street greenery using GSV images in the area of East Village, Manhattan District, New York City. We found that GSV to be well suited for assessing street-level greenery. We suggest further that the modified GVI may be a relatively objective measurement of street-level greenery, and that GSV in combination with GVI may be well suited in guiding urban landscape planning and management.

The study presents results of measuring indoor and outdoor concentrations of ground-level ozone (O₃) in the center of the city of Opava. Measuring was conducted in the exhibition building of the museum, in Opava schools, in a private apartment and in museum depositories. Based on the measurements were determined indoor and outdoor ozone concentrations ratios (I/O), which ranged from 0.3 to 1.3 in the Historical Exhibition Building of Silesian Museum, from 0.3 to 0.4 in schools, from 0.5 to 0.6 in a private apartment. Ozone concentrations measured in the buildings of the Silesian Museum show the differences in behavior of the ozone in similar areas in the same location but with different modes of preventive conservation. The darkening of a room, the movement of people and the ventilation system contribute to decreasing (or increasing) of air exchange. Materials with a great ability to break down ozone help to decrease the indoor concentration of ozone and as a result influence the I/O ratios.

Urban particulate air pollution is a serious health issue. Trees within cities can remove fine particles from the atmosphere and consequently improve air quality and human health. Tree effects on PM2.5 concentrations and human health are modeled for 10 U.S. cities. The total amount of PM_2.5 removed annually by trees varied from 4.7 tonnes in Syracuse to 64.5 tonnes in Atlanta, with annual values varying from $1.1 million in Syracuse to $60.1 million in New York City. Most of these values were from the effects of reducing human mortality. Mortality reductions were typically around 1 person yr^-1 per city, but were as high as 7.6 people yr^-1 in New York City. Average annual percent air quality improvement ranged between 0.05% in San Francisco and 0.24% in Atlanta. Understanding the impact of urban trees on air quality can lead to improved urban forest management strategies to sustain human health in cities.

Parks are significant parts of the urban landscape and comprise about 6% of city and town areas in the conterminous United States. These urban parks are estimated to contain about 370 million trees with a structural value of approximately $300 billion. The number of park trees varies by region of the country, but they can produce significant air quality effects in and near parks, related to air temperatures, air pollution, ultraviolet radiation, and carbon dioxide (a dominant greenhouse gas related to global climate change). Additional open space and other vacant lands in cities, which may contain trees and other vegetation, contribute significant additional benefits. Effects of parks and open space at the city scale can vary significantly depending on the amount of parkland and amount of tree cover within the parkland.

V této metodice jsou shrnuty poznatky z provedené rešerše odborné literatury, dále je prezentován model použitý pro hodnocení prostupu částic přes polopropustnou vegetační bariéru a výsledky modelování. Na základě informací získaných z rešerše a modelových výpočtů je navržen metodický postup pro výpočet účinků bariéry ve smyslu snížení imisních příspěvků silniční komunikace. Metodika je zaměřena především na rozptyl částic frakce PM₇₅ a PM₁₀, zahrnuty však jsou i částice PM_2,5 a rovněž polycyklické aromatické uhlovodíky a těžké kovy vázané na tyto částice. Uplatnění metodiky se předpokládá zejména v oblastech projektové přípravy a realizaci výsadeb, pro projekty dopravní infrastruktury, pro přípravu projektů k žádostem o dotační podporu a pro rozhodování orgánů veřejné správy.

The results confirm the effective potential of trees and green barriers (shrubs and hedges) in removing airborne particulate matter, highlighting the functional role of the urban forest and pocket parks in improving urban environment and life quality of citizens and the need to preserve, as well as to increase, urban vegetation. These considerations may be crucial for a sustainable urban planning, providing at region and municipal scale innovative, reliable and effective approach for the reducing of urban air pollution, aimed to an integration into standard regulatory measures such as limitation of traffic and emissions. In the EC political context, Green Infrastructures may represent a multifunctional resource capable of providing a wide range of environmental benefits and services. Further studies are in progress in aim to assess the potential role of vegetation (in particular trees and green barriers as shrubs and hedges), in relation to its type and structure, in abating air pollutant concentration, improving air quality and corresponding many ecosystem services, especially in high populated areas.This research confirms that urban vegetation can positively impact local air quality and highlights the need for appropiate public urban planning.