Assessing the contribution of domestic gardens to urban ecosystem services

该项目将提供一种新颖的公民科学方法来收集和解释有关家庭花园的数据，以便与项目合作伙伴共同制定行动计划，优先考虑家庭花园内外的绿化解决方案。家庭花园是城市环境中绿色基础设施（GI）的重要来源。它们是重要的绿地斑块，可以在更大的地理标志区域（公园、休闲场所等）之间提供连接，从而改善生态系统的功能及其提供的服务，例如减少地表水径流，从而降低洪水风险，降低城市温度。虽然单独来看，家庭花园可能看起来微不足道，但家庭花园在城市矩阵中贡献了高达30%的绿色空间，这在城市规模上变得尤为重要。尽管如此，国内园林提供的绿色基础设施的数量和质量并没有得到很好的证明。这对城市环境的未来复原力以及市民的健康和福祉都有影响。目前的数据高估了私人花园内的植被数量，这导致随后环境模型输出的不准确（例如，极端降雨事件中的地表水径流），以及地理标志需求区域的确定和优先排序，阻碍了在实地采取有效行动。此外，一般公众往往不知道他们自己的私人花园的环境价值，以及他们如何改善它。本项目将通过以下方式直接解决这些问题：邀请城市居民完成一项关于他们自己花园的在线调查，调查结果将被合并，以创建国内花园绿地数量和质量的地图。调查对象将根据他们对调查的回答为他们的花园的环境质量打分，并提供一些关于他们的花园如何在生物多样性、气候调节和改善空气质量方面得到改善的信息。利用高分辨率卫星数据验证调查结果。卫星数据与调查结果的结合将用于建立不同花园类型的分类方案，然后可以将其外推到更广泛的城市地区。模拟家庭花园内的植被如何影响地表径流、温度降低和空气质量。这将在多个尺度上实现，从单个花园到社区水平，最终达到城市规模。根据之前的目标和现有的、更大规模的绿色基础设施数据集，制定城市地理标志解决方案的行动计划。曼彻斯特是该项目的试验城市；该提案是与曼彻斯特市议会、红玫瑰森林、南路住房、兰开夏野生动物信托基金以及曼彻斯特未来绿色基础设施战略小组（环境署、BDP、基础工作、国民信托）的其他成员合作制定的。项目产出将使这些最终用户能够在当前和未来气候情景下制定更可靠的地理特征计划。因此，项目产出将有助于提高当地居民的生活质量，并改善曼城环境的复原力。进一步的影响将发生在个人层面（根据调查反馈改善个人花园，加强社区凝聚力），社区层面（所创造的证据可用于新住房开发的生物多样性/GI/ES抵消，住房协会将使用项目产出来改善社区和获得绿色空间）和利益相关者层面(私人开发商可以使用项目产出来增加住宅区和发展的价值。第三部门组织可以使用这些地图来制定政策建议和行动)。

This project will provide a novel citizen science approach to collecting and interpreting data about domestic gardens in order to co-develop an action plan with project partners to prioritise greening solutions within and beyond domestic gardens. Domestic gardens offer a valuable source of green infrastructure (GI) within an urban environment. They are important patches of greenspace that can provide connectivity between larger areas of GI (parks, recreation grounds etc), therefore improving the functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide, such as reducing surface water runoff thereby reducing flood risk, and lowering urban temperatures. While individually, a domestic garden may appear insignificant, collectively domestic gardens contribute up to 30% of greenspace within the urban matrix, which becomes especially important at the city scale. In spite of this, the quantity and quality of green infrastructure provision by domestic gardens is not well-evidenced. This has implications for the future resilience of an urban environment and the health and well-being of its citizens. Current data over-estimates the amount of vegetation within private gardens, which leads to subsequent inaccuracies in environmental model outputs (e.g. surface water runoff in an extreme rainfall event), and in the identification and prioritisation of areas of GI need, inhibiting effective action on-the-ground. Furthermore, the general public are often unaware of the environmental value of their own private garden and how they can improve it.This project will address these issues directly by:1. Inviting city residents to complete an online survey about their own garden, the results of which will be amalgamated to create maps of domestic garden greenspace both in terms of quantity and quality. Survey respondents will be given a score for the environmental quality of their garden based on their responses to the survey, together with some information as to how their garden could be improved in relation to biodiversity, climate regulation and improving air quality.2. Validating the survey responses using high resolution satellite data. The combination of the satellite data with the survey responses will be used to establish a classification scheme for different garden types, which can then be extrapolated to the wider city area.3. Modelling how the vegetation within a domestic garden impacts surface runoff, temperature reduction and air quality. This will be done across multiple scales, from an individual garden to the neighbourhood-level and eventually at the city-scale.4. Developing an action plan for GI solutions within the city based on the findings from the previous objectives and existing, larger-scale, green infrastructure datasets.Manchester is the test city for this project; the proposal has been developed in partnership with Manchester City Council, Red Rose Forest, Southway Housing, Lancashire Wildlife Trust and additional members of the Manchester a Certain Future Green Infrastructure Strategy Group (Environment Agency, BDP, Groundwork, National Trust). The project outputs will allow these end-users to develop a more robust plan for GI under current and future climate scenarios. Consequently, project outputs will contribute to enhancing the quality of life for the local population and to improving the resilience of the Manchester City environment. Further impact will occur at the individual level (improving individual gardens based on the survey feedback, strengthening community cohesion), neighbourhood-level (the evidence created can be used for biodiversity/GI/ES offsetting for new housing developments, housing associations will use the project outputs for improving neighbourhoods and access to green space) and stakeholder-level (private developers can use the outputs to add value to residential areas and development, third sector organisations can use the maps for developing policy recommendations and actions).