GLOBIO involvement in the NATURVATION project.
Given the ongoing increase in urban area and population, there is increasing need to quantify urban biodiversity and ecosystem services delivered by urban green. The H2020 project ‘NATURVATION’ (NATure-based URban innovation; 2017-2020) aims to understand what is needed to unlock the potential of nature-based solutions for more sustainable urban development. As part of this project, the GLOBIO team will be collating and synthesizing literature reporting on ecosystem services delivered in cities, with the ultimate aim to establish quantitative relationships that can be used to map urban biodiversity and ecosystem services.
In collaboration with the Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Sweden, we first screened the peer-reviewed literature to gather and categorize papers reporting on ecosystem services delivered by urban green and blue infrastructure. The resulting database provides an overview of papers that report on the delivery of various ecosystem services relevant in cities (local climate regulation, air quality, waste treatment (water purification/soil remediation), storm water management, pollination, recreation and aesthetic values). Papers were categorized according to various characteristics relevant to the NATURVATION project (challenge addressed, type of urban green/blue infrastructure). The database also contains information on the indicators used to quantify the ecosystem services and provides, where possible, indicative values of these indicators.
