Linking ecosystem health and services of novel green network for climate change adaptation

Abstract

The beneficial services of Green Network in mitigating climate change impacts for the urban area are widely acknowledged. Due to social and economic demands in Green Network implementations, it has been challenging to restore these green areas. Consequently, minimize ecosystem services from their initial naturalness condition, or create unexpected effects on city dwellers.

This dissertation aims to critically appraise the capability of the Green Network to deliver a range of climate change adaptation services through an ability to host a healthy ecosystem. And to comprehensively address the role of ecosystem integrity in climate change adaptation. By presenting that ecosystem health and ecosystem services could cause benefits as well as harms to society if they are treated separately by management, even though both are under the same scope. As such, Glasgow city has proven to be a relevant case study due to the establishment of Green Network. This study assessed Glasgow city based on qualitative and quantitative methods to detect potential sites where exist are the extent of (1) policy focused ecosystem services (i.e., biosecurity, carbon sequestration, and flood regulation), and (2) healthy ecosystem. Indicators are used to appraise their capabilities. By using the GIS-based weighted multi criterion decision method, practitioners from government agencies qualitatively gave weighted decisions. Potential sites are overlaid to express opportunities and threats between ecosystem services and ecosystem health. The result demonstrates that Glasgow's Green Network sufficiently has average to adequate health. While ecosystem services in the city are inadequate, the great extent coincides with good health extent; i.e., GN could adapt to climate change and provide ES to some degree despite hosting a novel ecosystem. Determining ecosystem health is helpful in terms of understanding ecosystem services supply where ecosystem services are proportionally increased if a "healthy" condition exists. This condition is highlighted by the "biosecurity," which has the greatest extent in multiple-services areas. Still, the caution of implementing ecosystem services is pronounced where ecosystem services could be identified in an "unhealthy" environment. It poses links to several ecosystem disservices, of which Glasgow city has shown mixed results. To target, the multi-functionality of ecosystem services could be the first step to eliminate adverse impact and endeavour towards ecosystem integrity. This approach could be more precise if it included data with a broader range, for instance, climatic, social cohesion, economics, and biodiversity data. However, it is suitable for learning purposes and helps capture beneficial and adaptive characteristics of Green Networks by applying open data.