Ecosystem services in Louisville urban green spaces

Background/Question/Methods

Urban agricultural landscapes are represented in a variety of spatially and temporally diverse forms, including rooftop gardens, city parks, community gardens, urban orchards, and private gardens. This type of city infrastructure provides important environmental services such as enhanced plant, insect, and animal biodiversity, high air quality, water regulation, carbon sequestration, and healthy soil. In addition, cities benefit from green zones in the social aspect, providing access to food security, farming and gardening, and cultural and educational opportunities. While city parks and community gardens have attracted a lot of attention from researchers in the last decade, much less research has focused on urban orchards as a potential multipurpose landscape to promote environmental health in cities. In this study, we assessed 9 sites across three types of urban green spaces (parks, community gardens, urban orchards) in Louisville, KY, during April-September 2021. We measured several aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem services including monthly surveys of plant diversity and abundance, tree physiological parameters (height, DBH), and crown health. These data were used to calculate stored carbon, yearly produced oxygen, and air pollution removal using the US Forest Service i-Tree software.

Results/Conclusions

On average, these urban orchards provided 559.3 pounds of carbon storage, 260.2 pounds of O2, and 2.3 pounds of air pollution removal yearly, as well as contained unique plant communities. Our results illustrate the importance of green zones in cities and fill a gap in knowledge on urban orchards in particular.