مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد ارزیابی کیفیت زیست محیطی فضای سبز شهری – اسپرینگر 2018

Urbanization considerably afects ecosystems and their services to human beings and other living things. Urban development isolates, fragments, and degrades natural habitats and disrupts hydrological systems. It also makes the composition of species simple and uniform and modifes energy fow and nutrient cycling (Alberti et al. 2003). According to the United Nations (UN) report, more than 54% is related to lives of people in cities, a proportion expected to increase by 66% by 2050 (United Nations 2014). In recent decades, overcrowding and unplanned growth of cities have received considerable attention and increased the need to achieve sustainable cities (Rostami et al. 2015). As the world continues its urbanization process, sustainable development challenges will be increasingly concentrated in cities (SDSN Thematic Group 2015; Nilsson et al. 2014; United Nations Human Settlements 2009; United Nations 2014). Development of cities infuences structure of landscape through the shape, size, composition, and interconnectivity of natural patches. It also generates diferent, unique and severe disturbances via physical changes in urban areas (Alberti 2005). Therefore, integrated approaches to enhance the lives of urban quality dwellers are needed (Nilsson et al. 2014). In urban systems, urban green spaces are an important natural and semi-natural part of city that can be a signifcant contributor in urban sustainable development (Ahern 2013; Haq 2011; Li et al. 2015; Tian et al. 2014). They are the most important ecological entities for urban dwellers by enhancing sustainability and livability of cities and improving the quality of urban life with a wide range of benefts, including health (De Vries et al. 2003; Maas et al. 2006; Mitchell and Popham 2008; Takano et al. 2002; Wolch et al. 2014), social aspects (Grove et al. 2006; Hope et al. 2003; Martin et al. 2004; Troy et al. 2007), ecological dimensions (Gómez et al. 2004; Gómez-Baggethun and Barton 2013; Jim 2013; Tian et al. 2011) and economic advantages (Kong et al. 2007; Morancho 2003; Tyrväinen and Miettinen 2000). However, in recent decades, human activities and urbanization have had strong efects on scales and structures of urban green spaces. As a result, it has profoundly afected biodiversity, ecosystem processes, ecosystem services, climate, and environmental quality on scales ranging from the local city to the entire globe (Costanza et al. 1997; Costanza and Daly 2003; De Groot et al. 2002; Tian et al. 2012; Wu 2014; Wu et al. 2013; Xu 2014). Therefore, studying and analyzing ecological quality of urban structure, especially urban green space, can be an efective response to rapid urbanization and maintain a sustainable living urban environment (Li et al. 2015). As a defnition, in this study, green space ecological quality (GSEQ) is a concept that spatially measures and evaluates the ecological quality of green space by quantities metrics according to the landscape ecology approach. Evaluation of urban GSEQ is helpful to understand the landscape structure and current status of sustainable development. These are the key issues required to be resolved by urban ecologists and landscape planners. In this research, valuation of the GSEQ with regard to its spatial properties has become considerable. This investigates how the spatial properties of green space patches would afect ecological quality of green spaces. It also aims to measure the ecological quality with spatially explicit methods considering both ecosystem properties and landscape structural attributes such as landscape ecology approach and metrics (Ahern 2013). Although, in recent studies, ecologists have endeavored to present the quality concept and how it afects ecological function and processes (Engen et al. 2002), it is not easy to determine the causality between process and pattern. To conceptualize quality, it is necessary to develop a conceptual framework to evaluate the ecological quality of urban green patches.