The landscape services of urban spontaneous forests in Padova (north-eastern Italy)

Transposing scientific concepts to develop practical solutions to societal challenges is complex but also an important requisite when aiming to a sustainable future. Understanding the relationship between benefits linked to societal values and the landscape is therefore crucial. The concept of “landscape services” has been introduced to describe the intensive pattern-process interactions connecting natural and human activities. The structure-function-value chain framework enables to incorporate landscape services into future design. In this study we investigate the value given by citizens to unconventional forest areas within an urban landscape as case study of the structure-function-value chain to further develop our knowledge on landscape services in cities. We have used three parameters able to capture the variability that can be observed in the urban green areas and that represent the three elements of the chain: size, species richness, and awareness. We selected 23 woodland patches spontaneously growing on abandoned areas in the urban landscape of Padova (north-eastern Italy), and considered their size as a spatially explicit characteristic of these landscape elements. We surveyed all the vascular plants to obtain the species richness of each forest patch that can be used as an indicator of the ecological function of these landscape elements. The people knowledge of one of these urban voids represents a clear indication of their awareness towards these green urban areas. In other terms, the people consciousness is a way of valuing the landscape elements. A total of 212 plant species were identified. As observed from a 3D scatter plot, these three variables are correlated. This indicates that larger is the forest area, higher will be number of species and higher is the possibility that citizens are aware of that forest. The observed structure-function-value chain can help to delineate specific indications and value these urban landscape features within urban planning strategies.