Air pollution is one of world's largest planetary health risk factors. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been key in integrating air quality indicators into the urban green planning and public health discourse. Despite important contributions, approaches that include multidimensional indicators into research, planning and policies are still limited. National standards for some types of air pollutants are missing, with little evidence for a threshold for health effects. To respond to these gaps, we provide an overview and guidance for air pollution indicators, using three case studies in Europe and Latin America. We discuss the importance of context, specific pollutants and vulnerable groups and suggest new approaches at finer scales. Our findings also point out that knowledge of pollutants uptake in edible plants can give a hint to potential exposure risks for humans. Our lessons learned target specific policies and are organized into three main ideas: (a) multidimensional indicators and their implications for NBS and policy; (b) plants as biological indicators and as schools’ subjects and (c) the integration of the co-benefits to manage air quality.

Access to (urban) nature is vital for people's wellbeing, but this accessibility is not evenly spread across socio-demographic groups, nor across the European continent. This paper fills a research gap by exploring the use patterns and accessibility of forests and parks across European cities, based on a standardised online survey of 10,462 people from 33 European countries. The results highlight a complex relationship between accessibility, socio-demographic factors and personal motivations in shaping the use of forests and parks. Key findings include variations in visiting patterns by age and gender, with younger individuals and women showing a higher propensity for frequent visits. Motivations for forest and park use varied widely, ranging from physical health and recreation to social interaction and mental well-being. Importantly, the study identified accessibility challenges, particularly travel time, connectivity and limited amenities (e.g. safe walking/cycling routes, lighting, toilets), which limit park and forest use. The results also highlight the diversity in use patterns across different European regions and based on gender, revealing significant variations in how people value and use forests and parks. The study suggests that socio-demographic factors, accessibility and personal motivations play crucial roles in determining forest and park use, underscoring the importance of inclusive urban planning to accommodate diverse needs and preferences.Read the free for this article on the Journal blog.

Idea and objectives: Urban citizens are key beneficiaries of benefits delivered by urban green-blue infrastructure as nature-based solutions. However, the delivery as well as the utilization of ecosystem services is tied to local context and therefore, depending, e.g., on the types of locally relevant societal or environmental issues, urban morphology, socio-demographic characteristics of potential beneficiaries and resulting demands for ecosystem services, or conditions of urban nature inclusive of the state of health of green elements. In this regard, citizens may not only act as beneficiaries of benefits provided by nature, but also as knowledge holders regarding local conditions in the broadest sense. Tapping into this body of knowledge, e.g., through citizen science and/or participatory mapping approaches, is considered crucial for achieving resilient, sustainable, and locally relevant as well as more widely accepted nature-based solutions that promote human health and well-being. From a set of diverse cases, the application of a trait-based framework showcases how citizen science and participatory mapping may support urban planning and the promotion, management and/or monitoring of urban green-blue infrastructure as nature-based solutions at the local level. Background: Traits are understood as aggregate features of individual elements of the green-blue infrastructure, including, e.g., spatial, structural, functional, sensory, institutional or contextual qualities. In line with the social-ecological traits concept, these characteristics are seen to shape human experiences, knowledge and affordances, thus linking qualities of urban nature with ecosystem services and therefore, potential (co-)benefits. However, traits may also help to uncover local social-environmental issues including potentials and concerns, thus challenging urban policy-making. The implemented citizen science framework that is being presented adopts social-ecological traits as research theme-related boundary objects, e.g., to explore citizens’ awareness, perceptions and ideas of locally-specific traits. In so-doing, first, potential feedback loops that may shape compatibility of urban green-blue infrastructure elements for specific purposes, uses, and/or users may be uncovered. Second, potential pathways for local action may be identified to support a more holistic and more inclusive management and planning of nature-based solutions.

Climate change is a pressing global challenge with profound implications for human health. Forest-based climate change mitigation strategies, such as afforestation, reforestation, and sustainable forest management, offer promising solutions to mitigate climate change and simultaneously yield substantial co-benefits for human health. The objective of this scoping review was to examine research trends related to the interdisciplinary nexus between forests as carbon sinks and human health co-benefits. We developed a conceptual framework model, supporting the inclusion of exposure pathways, such as recreational opportunities or aesthetic experiences, in the co-benefit context. We used a scoping review methodology to identify the proportion of European research on forest-based mitigation strategies that acknowledge the interconnection between mitigation strategies and human impacts. We also aimed to assess whether synergies and trade-offs between forest-based carbon sink capacity and human co-benefits has been analysed and quantified. From the initial 4,062 records retrieved, 349 reports analysed European forest management principles and factors related to climate change mitigation capacity. Of those, 97 studies acknowledged human co-benefits and 13 studies quantified the impacts on exposure pathways or health co-benefits and were included for full review. Our analysis demonstrates that there is potential for synergies related to optimising carbon sink capacity together with human co-benefits, but there is currently a lack of holistic research approaches assessing these interrelationships. We suggest enhanced interdisciplinary efforts, using for example multideterminant modelling approaches, to advance evidence and understanding of the forest and health nexus in the context of climate change mitigation.

This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of inhabitants and activity, and although they only occupy 6.7% of the total surface area, they account for 43.3% of the population; air quality has stabilized since the turn of the century, and there has been some improvement in the state of aquatic ecosystems, but still only 36% are in good condition, while the remainder have suffered morphological changes and different forms of nonpoint source pollution; meanwhile the biodiversity of flora and fauna remains still under threat. Environmental policies do not go far enough so there is a need for revision of the legislation related to environmental impact and the protection of natural areas, flora, and fauna. The promotion of environmental research must be accompanied by environmental education to foster a society which is more knowledgeable, has more control and influence over the decisions that deeply affect it. Indeed, nature conservation goes hand in hand with other social and economic challenges that require a more sustainable vision. Today’s problems with nature derive from the current economic model, which is environmentally unsustainable in that it does not take into account environmental impacts. Lastly, we propose a series of reasonable and feasible priority measures and actions related to each use made of the country’s natural resources, to the impacts they have had, and to their management, in the hope that these can contribute to improving the conservation and management of the environment and biodiversity and move towards sustainability.

OPINION article Front. Sustain. Cities, 09 December 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2020.572556

The effective integration of biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services (ES) indicators into green infrastructure (GI) planning and conservation constitutes an important challenge for landscape and urban planners. In this study, we developed an operational framework for GI planning at the landscape scale in the Province of Barcelona. Building on the ES cascade model, the framework integrates a comprehensive assessment of biodiversity (including functional biodiversity), ecosystem functions, and both ES supply and demand, to assure a sound knowledge basis for GI planning. Specifically, we aimed at: (1) identifying the quantitative relationships and spatial patterns of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, ES supply and demand indicators; (2) assessing the mismatches between biodiversity, ES supply and demand and (3) prioritizing key areas for GI planning which respond to various conservation objectives and human demands. Our study underscores the crucial importance of peri-urban green areas, including forests or crop areas, for the urban biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ES provision. We further observe an important mismatch between the supply and demand of ES at landscape scale. In general, peri-urban forests provide a broad diversity of ES; heavy urbanized areas, including the city of Barcelona and its metropolitan area, as well as areas along the coast concentrate the highest ES demands, while areas combining high ES supply and demand are especially found in the urban-rural fringes. Our study revealed that the urban fringes should be critically focused on when integrating both ES and biodiversity indicators into green infrastructure planning at landscape scale. Our approach has been successfully implemented into landscape planning in the Province of Barcelona, reconciling both biodiversity conservation and ES enhancement in practical GI planning.

Context It is known that land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes affect plant community assembly for decades. However, both the short- and the long-term effects of contrasting LULC change pathways on this assembly are seldom explored. Objectives To assess how LULC change pathways affect woody plant community parameters (i.e. species richness, diversity and evenness) and species' presence and abundance, compared with environmental factors and neutral processes. Methods The study was performed in Mediterranean limestone scrublands in NE Spain. Cover of each woody species was recorded in 150 scrubland plots belonging to five LULC change pathways along the past century, identified using land-cover maps and fieldwork. For each plot, total woody and herbaceous vegetation cover, local environmental variables and geographical position were recorded. Effects of these pathways and factors on plant community parameters and on species presence and abundance were assessed, considering spatial effects potentially associated to neutral processes. Results Species richness and diversity were associated with LULC change pathways and elevation, while evenness was only associated with this last. Pathways and environmental variables explained similar variance in both species' presence and cover. In general, while community parameters were affected by recent-past (1956) use, species presence and abundance were associated with far-past (pre-1900) cropping. No relevant spatial effect was detected for any studied factor. Conclusions Historical LULC changes and current environmental factors drive local-scale community assembly in Mediterranean scrublands to an equal extent, while contrasting time-scale effects are found at community and species level. Neutral, dispersal-based processes are found to be non-relevant.

gree of homogenization but a high frequency of aliens. Dry shrubs and rocky habitats display a lower degree of homogenization and a low frequency of aliens.

Nature‐Based Solutions (NBS) are solutions to societal challenges that are inspired and supported by nature. The European Commission requested the EKLIPSE project to help building up an evidence and knowledge base on the benefits and challenges of applying NBS. In response to the request, the EKLIPSE Expert Working Group on Nature‐based Solutions to Promote Climate Resilience in Urban Areas (EWG) devised the following objectives: 1) To develop an impact evaluation framework with a list of criteria for assessing the performance of NBS in dealing with challenges related to climate resilience in urban areas; 2) To prepare an application guide for measuring how NBS projects fare against the identified indicators in delivering multiple environmental, economic and societal benefits; 3) To make recommendations to improve the assessment of the effectiveness of NBS projects, including the identification of knowledge gaps according to the criteria presented in the impact evaluation framework. This document reports on these three objectives. It is intended to be used as a reference document by members of current and future European projects with an interest in NBS in urban areas, and by practitioners seeking to compare the effectiveness of NBS design, implementation and evaluation. The EWG recognises that the type and intensity of NBS impacts may vary according to the characteristics of the NBS and the context in which they are applied. The intent of this report is not to define NBS, but rather provide examples of indicators and methods for assessing impacts of NBS that may be applied in a range of different ways across urban …

Using Barcelona and Shanghai as case studies, we examined the nature-based solutions (NBS) in urban settings specifically within cities experiencing post-industrialization and globalization. Our specific research questions are: (1) What are the spatiotemporal changes in urban built-up land and green space in Barcelona and Shanghai? (2) What are the relationships between economic development, exemplified by post-industrialization, globalization, and urban green space? Urban land use and green space change were evaluated using data derived from a variety of sources, including satellite images, landscape matrix indicators, and a land conversion matrix. The relationships between economic development, globalization, and environmental quality were analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling based on secondary statistical data. Both Barcelona and Shanghai have undergone rapid urbanization, with urban expansion in Barcelona beginning in the 1960s-1970s and in Shanghai in the last decade. While Barcelona's urban green space and green space per capita began declining between the 1950s and 1990s, they increased slightly over the past two decades. Shanghai, however, has consistently and significantly improved urban green space and green space per capita over the past six decades, especially since the economic reform in 1978. Economic development has a direct and significant influence on urban green space for both cities and post-industrialization had served as the main driving force for urban landscape change in Barcelona and Shanghai. Based on secondary statistical and qualitative data from on-site observations and interviews with local experts, we highlighted the institution's role in NBS planning. Furthermore, aspiration to become a global or globalizing city motivated both cities to use NBS planning as a place-making tool to attract global investment, which is reflected in various governing policies and regulations. The cities' effort to achieve a higher status in the global city hierarchy may have contributed to the increase in total green space and urban green per capita. In addition, various institutional shifts, such as land property rights in a market economy vs. a transitional economy, may also have contributed to the differences in efficiency when expanding urban green space in Barcelona and Shanghai.

Natural disasters can cause abrupt disturbances in coastal wetlands, affecting the social perception of ecosystem services (ES). The Tubul-Raqui coastal wetland is one of the most important wetlands in south-central Chile. Rich in biodiversity, these wetlands provide ES to a population of 2238 inhabitants. The recent M-W = 8.8 earthquake of 2010 caused a coastal uplift of 1.4 m and substantial morphological, social, and environmental changes. This paper analyzes the social perceptions of the inhabitants of the village of Tubul-Raqui following a large earthquake disturbance with regards to ES provision frequency and their future changes. A statistically representative semi-structured survey was conducted (175 valid surveys) and the data interpreted through factor analysis and statistical tests for independent categorical variables. The perception of cultural and regulating services was significantly greater than that of provisioning services, which were probably the most affected by the earthquake. Residents identified habitat for species, recreation, and hazard regulation as the most important ES. Perception was influenced by the categorical variables of gender, age, and ethnicity; for example, hazard regulation services varied strongly by gender. According to the respondents, the availability of ES will remain stable (50%) or decrease (40%) in the next 50 years, mainly due to anthropogenic drivers; the effect of natural disasters was not mentioned among the main drivers of change.

The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. We examined the transformative capacity of citizen science in particular learning through environmental CS as conservation tool. We reviewed the CS and social-learning literature and examined 14 conservation projects across Europe that involved collaborative CS. We also developed a template that can be used to explore learning arrangements (i.e., learning events and materials) in CS projects and to explain how the desired outcomes can be achieved through CS learning. We found that recent studies aiming to define CS for analytical purposes often fail to improve the conceptual clarity of CS; CS programs may have transformative potential, especially for the development of individual skills, but such transformation is not necessarily occurring at the organizational and institutional levels; empirical evidence on simple learning outcomes, but the assertion of transformative effects of CS learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation; and it is unanimous that learning in CS is considered important, but in practice it often goes unreported or unevaluated. In conclusion, we point to the need for reliable and transparent measurement of transformative effects for democratization of knowledge production.

Community assembly rules have been extensively studied, but its association with regional environmental variation and land use history remains largely unexplored. Land use history might be especially important in Mediterranean forests, considering their historical deforestation and recent afforestation. Using forest inventories and historical (1956) and recent (2000) land cover maps, we explored the following hypotheses: 1) woody species assembly is driven by environmental factors, but also by historical landscape attributes; 2) recent forests exhibit lower woody species richness than pre‐existing due to the existence of colonization credits; 3) these credits are modulated by species’ life‐forms and dispersal mechanisms. We examined the association of forest historical type (pre‐existing versus recent) with total species richness and that of diverse life‐forms and dispersal groups, also considering the effects of current environment and past landscape factors. When accounting for these effects, no significant differences in woody species richness were found between forest historical types except for vertebrate‐dispersed species. Species richness of this group was affected by the interaction of forest historical type with distance to coast and rainfall: vertebrate‐dispersed species richness increased with rainfall and distance to the coast in recent forests, while it was higher in dryer sites in pre‐existing forests. In addition, forest historical types showed differences in woody species composition associated to diverse environmental and past landscape factors. In view of these results we can conclude that: 1) community assembly in terms of species richness is fast enough to exhaust most colonization credit in recent Mediterranean forests except for vertebrate‐dispersed species; 2) for these species, colonization credit is affected by the interplay of forest history and a set of proxies of niche and landscape constraints of species dispersal and establishment; 3) woody species assemblage is mostly shaped by the species’ ecological niches in these forests.

Habitat invasion by alien plants is strongly modulated by environmental and landscape factors. However, the effect of landscape history remains largely unknown, despite the fact that it could play an important role in many stages of invasion processes, even long after land-use changes have occurred determining invasion debts. We analysed the effects of past landscape and recent changes therein, together with habitat type and current context (i.e. climate, topography and landscape), on three components of the invasion process at habitat scale: alien species presence (i.e. at least one alien species occurring), richness (number of species found) and abundance (mean species cover). We selected 531 plots in nine habitat types in Barcelona province (7725 km(2)) and recorded alien (neophyte) species cover. We performed Generalized Linear Models on these invasion components using the generated data and a set of predictors of habitat, context and landscape factors obtained from plot sampling and digital cartography. The results show that invasion components are affected by diverse habitat and context factors and, in some cases, by landscape history. Alien species presence is influenced by habitat type and the current environmental context, and by the number of habitat changes in the adjacent landscape; on the other hand, species richness is only associated with the current context and species abundance is only influenced by historical cropland cover. The association between alien species presence and abundance and past and recent landscape changes suggests the existence of accumulated invasion debts at habitat scale that might be relevant to habitat management.