Understanding and explaining the use of green spaces and forests is challenging for sustainable urban planning. In recent years there has been increasing demand for novel approaches to investigate urban green infrastructure by capitalizing on large databases from existing citizen science tools. In this study, we analyzed iNaturalist data to perform an assessment of the intentional use of these urban spaces for their value and to understand the main drivers. We retrieved the total number of observations obtained across a set of 672 European cities and focused on reporting from mapped green areas and forests. We used two separate multivariate explanatory models to investigate which factors explained variations in the number of observations for green areas and forests. We found a relatively heterogeneous use of these two urban green spaces. Gross domestic product was important in explaining the number of visits. Availability and accessibility also had positive relationships with the use of green areas and forests in cities, respectively. This study paves the way for better integration of citizen science data in assessing cultural services provided by urban green infrastructure and therefore in supporting the evaluation of spatial planning policies for the sustainable development of urban areas.

Citizen science data to measure human use of green areas and forests in european cities / Cambria, Vito Emanuele; Campagnaro, Thomas; Trentanovi, Giovanni; Testolin, Riccardo; Attorre, Fabio; Sitzia, Tommaso. - In: FORESTS. - ISSN 1999-4907. - 12:6(2021). [10.3390/f12060779]

Citizen science data to measure human use of green areas and forests in european cities

Cambria, Vito Emanuele
;
Testolin, Riccardo;Attorre, Fabio;
2021

Abstract

Understanding and explaining the use of green spaces and forests is challenging for sustainable urban planning. In recent years there has been increasing demand for novel approaches to investigate urban green infrastructure by capitalizing on large databases from existing citizen science tools. In this study, we analyzed iNaturalist data to perform an assessment of the intentional use of these urban spaces for their value and to understand the main drivers. We retrieved the total number of observations obtained across a set of 672 European cities and focused on reporting from mapped green areas and forests. We used two separate multivariate explanatory models to investigate which factors explained variations in the number of observations for green areas and forests. We found a relatively heterogeneous use of these two urban green spaces. Gross domestic product was important in explaining the number of visits. Availability and accessibility also had positive relationships with the use of green areas and forests in cities, respectively. This study paves the way for better integration of citizen science data in assessing cultural services provided by urban green infrastructure and therefore in supporting the evaluation of spatial planning policies for the sustainable development of urban areas.
2021
green spaces; human connection to nature; iNaturalist; nature-based solutions; urban forest; urban green infrastructure
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Citizen science data to measure human use of green areas and forests in european cities / Cambria, Vito Emanuele; Campagnaro, Thomas; Trentanovi, Giovanni; Testolin, Riccardo; Attorre, Fabio; Sitzia, Tommaso. - In: FORESTS. - ISSN 1999-4907. - 12:6(2021). [10.3390/f12060779]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1661220
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