Presentation given by Dr Alessio Russ 8th July for CCRI seminar series. Over the last few decades, the school of thought surrounding the urban ecosystem has increasingly become in vogue among researchers worldwide. Since half of the world’s population lives in cities, urban ecosystem services have become essential to human health and wellbeing. Rapid urban growth has forced sustainable urban developers to rethink important steps by updating and, to some degree, recreating the human–ecosystem service linkage. This talk addresses concepts and metaphors such as nature-based solutions and wellbeing, ecosystem services, nature-based thinking, urban regeneration, urban agriculture, urban-rural interface, rewilding.

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Urban Sustainability: Nature-based solutions and ecosystem
services
Alessio Russo PhD
Senior Lecturer and Academic Course Leader in MA Landscape Architecture

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RESEARCH

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Research can impact your everyday life
• to engage with practice
• to inform policy makers and city managers

5. Jerry Brown
Former Governor of California

6. Vasundhara Raje, Former Chief Minister of
Rajasthan

7. Societal challenges
Population growth
Climate Change
Food security & Disaster risk
Air pollution & Health

9. 68% of the World’s Population Will Live in Cities
Source: UN, 2018

10. Heymans et al. 2019 Sustainability 11(13), 3723; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11133723

11. Green Infrastructure

13. The term GI was first coined in Florida in 1994 in a report to the governor
on land conservation strategies and was intended to reflect the notion that
natural systems are equally, if not more important, components of our
“infrastructure” Firehock, 2010
Green Infrastructure

14. Benedict, Mark A. and McMahon,
Edward T (2006) Green Infrastructure:
Linking Landscapes and Communities
Connectivity

15. Benedict, Mark A. and McMahon,
Edward T (2006) Green Infrastructure:
Linking Landscapes and Communities

17. The NbS concept is increasingly being
developed and applied by IUCN and other organisations, such as the
European Commission.
(Cohen-Shacham et al. 2016).

18. International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN)

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20. Nature-based Solutions (NBS) use ecosystems and the
services they provide to address societal challenges such as
climate change, food security or natural disasters (Cohen-
Shacham et al. 2016).
Nature-based Solutions

21. The NbS concept is increasingly being
developed and applied by IUCN and other
organisations, such as the European
Commission.
Cohen-Shacham, E., Walters, G., Janzen, C. and Maginnis, S. (eds.) (2016).
Nature-based Solutions to address global societal challenges. Gland,
Switzerland: IUCN. xiii + 97pp

22. Ecosystem sevices
“Ecosystem services are the benefits that humans
obtain from ecosystems”
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)

23. Human health and well-being depend on
‘‘ecosystem goods and services’’
(Costanza et al. 1997)

25. An apple a day keeps the doctor away Long visit to green spaces/day

26. Forest Bathing

28. Sustainable
communities
Ecosystem
services
Human
Health +
well-being

29. Russo&Cirella2021

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32. Four principal goals have been identified that can be addressed by
nature-based solutions:
Enhancing sustainable urbanisation… can stimulate economic
growth as well as improving the environment, making cities more
attractive, and
enhancing human well-being.
Restoring degraded ecosystems… can improve the resilience of
ecosystems, enabling them to deliver vital ecosystem services and
also to meet other societal challenges.
Developing climate change adaptation and mitigation…can
provide more resilient responses and enhance the storage of carbon.
Improving risk management and resilience…can lead to greater
benefits than conventional methods and offer synergies in reducing
multiple risks.
EU Directorate General on Research and
Innovation, 2015

35. Edible Green Infrastructure?

41. Assessing ES

43. Russo et al. 2016

44. Russo et al. 2014
Italy

45. Total amount of air pollutants (i.e., NO2, O3, PM2.5, PM10, and SO2) removed by trees in a year estimated using i-Tree Canopy
Version 6.1 and i-Tree Canopy Version 7.1 with local and UK average data (error bars represent SE, calculated from SEs of sampled
and classified points).
Russo et al. submitted
Bristol, UK

46. Russo et al. submitted

47. Essentially all models are wrong,
but some are useful
George E. P. Box

51. Transect
“Transect is a geographic cross section of a region used to reveal a
sequence of environments. For human occupied environments, this cross-
section can be used to identify a set of habitats that vary by their level and
intensity of urban character - a continuum that ranges from rural to urban”
(DPZ)
51

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Duany and Talen (2002) Transect Planning, Journal of the American Planning Association, 68:3, 245-266, DOI: 10.1080/01944360208976271

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57. Russo A., Cirella G.T. (2020)

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Russo & Cirella 2018

59. Vegetables and soil contaminated by
heavy metals and pollutants
Pollen allergies
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
Fruit fall problem
Water pollution from fertilizers and
chemicals
Water consumption
Ecosystem disservices

62. OGREN PLANT ALLERGY SCALE
(OPALS)
Measures the allergy potential (1-10)
Ex. Bolzano:
Zelkova carpinifolia = 10 the most allergenic
Acer negundo = males 10 females 1
Source: Provincia di BZ

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Nature-based solutions????

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THANK YOU
arusso@glos.ac.uk