Free Essay Example on Urban Ecosystem Regeneration

Introduction

The critical link between nature and people is the demand for ecosystem services, which creates substantial environmental effects such as climate change. The rapid expansion of cities presents problems and chances to develop more resilient, healthy, and liveable urban centres. Urban ecosystem regeneration is conducted on various habitats, like gardens, yards, urban forests, parks, cemeteries, and university areas. This regeneration is of high demand among citizens because of various local beneficiaries. Some essential services that the blue and the green infrastructure provide in cities include; climate and water regulation, reducing pollution, and health effects, social services, and rich habitat. The study of urban investments on the green and blue infrastructure is gaining interest, mainly because these investments enhance human well-being by generating many other services (Elmqvist and De Groot, 2015). Although many recent studies illustrate the importance of services based on the urban ecosystem, the dynamics of the ecosystem in urban landscapes are still poorly understood. Urban ecosystem regeneration and rehabilitation of ecosystems like growing trees have ecological, social, and economic advantages, hence the need to research these services.

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Potential Benefits

Monetary values of these benefits are calculated based on quantifying biophysical terms, for example, amounts of carbon emitted by trees per ha per annum. The values of these factors are often calculated as currency/ha/annum, which are later converted in prices. Trees provide leaders with chances to minimize the costs of managing a city’s infrastructure. Cities with trees are better in terms of water, energy, air, and health needs. They serve as air conditioners and air purifiers. These benefits are quantitative assets measurable using technical tools to give a monetary value. Trees minimize the peak flow rates and movement of stormwater that cause stormwater sewers and flooding. Various metropolitan areas usually save hundreds of millions of dollars by planting more trees. Billions of dollars are generally used by cities to prevent erosion and to control flooding. By urban forest regeneration, Castleport will reduce the cost of building and maintaining structures that prevent floods. At the same time, quality air helps in people's health (Elmqvist and De Groot, 2015). Millions of dollars will be saved with less asthma among children in the city of Castleport.

Trees also improve air quality and reduce urban heat and the consumption of energy as non-monetary benefits. Though reducing pollutants, such as nitrogen and sulfur, and removing small particles in the air, trees improve its quality. This regeneration will reduce the city’s atmosphere on hot summers hence increasing energy usage to cool buildings (Elmqvist and De Groot, 2015). Trees cool cities indirectly because of the leaves' function of evaporating water, therefore, catering to human well-being. Trees cool buildings directly by providing shade to homeowners hence improving their health. Also, studies done at the University of Illinois show that cities with trees have reduced crime and advanced learning in children. These trees also influence social cohesion and socializing by providing meeting places.

Evidence

Although urban forests across the world need restoration, the value of forest ecosystems in terms of ecological, economic, and social benefits is still unrecognised. The research about urban forest regeneration started only a few years ago. The problem of measuring the value of forests to enhance the environment and health of people has just begun addressing, and it will take time to research. Moreover, there is less or no experience gathered in putting these ideas into practice. One example of forest regeneration is witnessed in the New York Watershed project when the people were ordered to build a water filtration plant by the Environmental Protection Agency (Elmqvist and De Groot, 2015). The project covered about 2,000 ha of forest in the city. By protecting the watershed, the town educated its citizens about where their drinking water comes from, saved many billions of dollars, and provided valuable resources like timber.

The analysis of forest regeneration's potential benefits in this report is based on twenty-five studies in the USA, China, and Canada. The 25 studies state that ecosystems provide between 3212 and 17, 772 US dollars of benefits per ha per year (Arantes and Semensatto, 2020). The studies exclude some essential benefits, like social welfare and positive health effects. These studies calculated the monetary values of urban forest regeneration based on quantifying biophysical terms, such as the carbon emitted by trees per annum. These studies are based on standardized data gathering and analyses using environmental information and local fields. The research uses the Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM) to get detailed illustrations on five ecosystem services with trees provide; climate and water regulation, reducing pollution, and health effects, social services, and rich habitat (Zhang, 2019). The ESM describes the methods used in the valuation of money on ecosystem services. Furthermore, these 25 studies calculated the monetary value of trees based on currency/ha/year.

Risks and Unknowns

The restoration efforts of forests in urban areas involve more infrastructure, and more advanced methods tend to be more expensive than in rural areas. Regenerating forest is often surprising since urban soils are often depleted, modified, and stressing in terms of the chemicals of organisms (Arantes and Semensatto, 2020). These lands are often compacted, sealed, and polluted hence lack microbial microorganisms necessary for plant growth. It is hard to benefit from urban forest regeneration if urban soils are not adequately attended to because they need a lot of care. Therefore, it is essential to present technology and advanced techniques to prepare the polluted soils to achieve these benefits properly (Zhang, 2019). For example, it is necessary to use fertilizer and manure frequently when doing maintenance to improve the trees' growth since these soils are poor.

It takes at least one decade to express these monetary values due to all these restoration projects and time undertaken for these trees to be mature enough to reap off benefits. According to the 25 studies on ecosystem services, regeneration costs of city land in the USA are; woodland 49,000 dollars and grassland being 26,000 dollars (Zhang, 2019). These costs involve preparation, planting, planning, restoring modest soil, and plant propagation. These regeneration projects adversely affect the expected benefits in terms of time. They take a lot of time to implement, making it hard to monitor their growth accurately. Many trees in the city are often not attended to since ones these projects start; they often lack people to take care of since they take longer to mature (Elmqvist and De Groot, 2015). People go on with their day to day lives and forget about them and the care they need hence affecting potential benefits.

Regeneration Options

The process of forest regeneration at Castleport involves either of the three options; reforesting a single 30 ha area near the city centre, target 30 locations of each 1 ha, or a narrow 30 ha corridor along the river. The advantage of planting trees in a single area is that there is less maintenance since they are located in the same place. However, this method is not very useful in benefitting the city fully since it will provide specific benefits only to the area they are located in (Zhang, 2019). For example, only buildings near the forest location will have air conditioning, meaning that the city will not benefit from the services uniformly.

On the other hand, reforesting a narrow 30 ha corridor along the river is advantageous in that little or no maintenance is required since these trees will be in abundant water sources and minerals. However, it is not advisable to use this technique since it will not benefit the citizens of Castleport. People will not realize all the expected benefits since these trees will not be near the vicinity of human compounds. Finally, the third option is reforesting 30 locations of each one ha in the city. This report recommends this option since it best serves people’s interest. Planting these trees in 30 different locations across the city means that they will benefit people uniformly. People will be able to enjoy cool temperatures across the city (Elmqvist De Groot, 2015). The technique makes it possible for these trees to grow in spacious grounds, and the more space trees have, the bigger they become since there is no much mineral and water sharing.

References

Arantes Adas, M.A., Hardt, E., El Khouri Miraglia, S.G. and Semensatto, D., 2020. Reforest or perish: ecosystem services provided by riparian vegetation improve water quality in an urban reservoir (São Paulo, Brazil). Sustainability in Debate/Sustentabilidade em Debate, 11(1).

Elmqvist, T., Setälä, H., Handel, S.N., Van Der Ploeg, S., Aronson, J., Blignaut, J.N., Gomez-Baggethun, E., Nowak, D.J., Kronenberg, J. and De Groot, R., 2015. Benefits of restoring ecosystem services in urban areas. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 14, pp.101-108.

Gómez-Baggethun, E., and Barton, D.N., 2013. Classifying and valuing ecosystem services for urban planning. Ecological Economics, 86, pp.235-245.

Zhang, D., 2019. Costs of delayed reforestation and failure to reforest. New Forests, 50(1), pp.57-70.