Ecosystem Services in Urban and Peri-Urban Landscapes

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last decades, studies have established that ecosystem services could be applied in both urban areas and peri-urban spaces. However, such studies have mainly included separate visions on the urban and the peri-urban, rarely analyzing them together.

Urban and peri-urban landscapes include a diversity of areas with the potential of generating ecosystem services, such as lawns, parks, forests,  street trees, cultivated land,  lakes, wetlands, sea and streams. Several local services could be addressed for each of these ecosystems, with multiple potential co-benefits but also disservices. They could go from broader recreational and cultural values to more specific micro-climate regulation, air filtration, noise reduction, rainwater drainage and sewage treatment.

The aim of this Special Issue is to analyze the multiple dimensions of ecosystem services not only within urban landscapes, but also in peri-urban areas. As ecosystem services include services that are used for the benefits of human beings deriving from ecosystems, the topics of this Special Issue should include, but are not limited to, the following aspects impacting urban and peri-urban landscapes:

- Recreational and cultural ecosystem services in urban and peri-urban landscapes;

- Ecosystem services of specific environmental dimensions (air, water, land use/land cover);

- Ecosystem services for urban and peri-urban gardens;

- Farmland ecosystems within urban and peri-urban areas;

- Methods and indicators for assessing ecosystem services in urban and peri-urban spaces;

- Spatial and temporal variations in ecosystem services at the urban and peri-urban scale;

- Planning and management of ecosystem services in urban and peri-urban areas.

Prof. Dr. Remus Creţan
Dr. Mihai Razvan Nita
Guest Editors

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