Urban green space is an integral part of a city, which regulates air quality, water quality, and microclimate enabling modern city dwellers to live in a pleasant and healthy environment. Moreover, it serves as a space where residents including childre...
Urban green space is an integral part of a city, which regulates air quality, water quality, and microclimate enabling modern city dwellers to live in a pleasant and healthy environment. Moreover, it serves as a space where residents including children and senior citizens can exercise and take a rest, and starts to be utilized as a space for urban agriculture which aims to provide safe food. In this regard, the role of urban space has expanded greatly over the past years, and it takes on added importance.
Ecosystem services refer to such benefits provided by nature. Humankind has considered ecosystem services as goods and services that anyone can use at no cost. Once the resources and the environment, the very foundation for the provision of ecosystem services, are destructed, however, mankind can no longer enjoy the benefits. In this respect, economic value assessment of ecosystem services began to be utilized as a means to enhance the awareness and social consensus on its value and importance.
Ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories: provisioning services such as the provision of food, water and raw materials relevant to human survival; regulating services such as the control of air quality, water quality, microclimate and flood; cultural services enabling mankind to appreciate spiritual and religious value, cultural value, and aesthetic value, etc.
However, the analysis of the existing studies showed that assessment of ecosystem services has been made at an international or national level. In order to raise awareness of the gravity of the environmental pollution in developing countries where food and water provided by nature are crucial for survival of their people and their neighboring countries which intend to tap the resources of developing countries, provisioning service has been the highest-profile subject of study. Despite increasing demand for urban green which allows people who are exhausted in mind and soul to refresh and invigorate themselves and further to enjoy cultural benefits in their hectic urban life, the value of urban green has been rarely assessed.
This study is to evaluate urban green ecosystem services in order to substantially contribute to enhancing ecological welfare of citizens through urban green. In particular, it focuses on urban cemeteries which are urban infrastructure located in residential areas with easy access to residents but fail to be used widely.
The study evaluates provisioning, regulating and cultural services of urban cemetery and aims to discover the intrinsic and fundamental value of ecosystem services. As no study has been made on quantitative assessment, it develops an assessment model for urban cemetery ecosystem services.
The process of developing urban cemetery ecosystem services is as follows. First, it selects assessment items of ecosystem services appropriate for urban areas, and then develops alternative indicators which enable a quantitative assessment of the amount of services according to selected assessment items. Then, it sets an appropriate computation standard, and based on this, develops an assessment model which can convert the amount of sectoral ecosystem services into a percentage.
After selecting target areas based on the assessment model for urban cemetery ecosystem services, it conducted field survey in each target area, collected and analyzed GIS documents, and applied the assessment model to the field. The assessment of provisioning, regulating, and cultural services of urban cemetery in Seoul showed the results as follows.
First, in terms of urban cemetery’s food provisioning services for wild animals, cemetery rich in forest and grasslands which are rarely found in urban cemetery receives high evaluation. This indicates that urban cemetery plays an important role as a food source for wild animals in city.
Second, the evaluation of urban cemetery’s regulating services such as air purification, microclimate regulation, soil erosion, flood regulation, water purification, pest regulation, and pollination showed that target areas recorded different evaluation score according to their land cover, vegetation, and vegetation covering area. In terms of regulating services, significance of services would vary according to the economic conditions of the target area, and therefore urban planning should be developed based on these aspects.
Third, assessment has been made on the selected items for urban cemetery’s cultural services including recreational activities, spiritual and religious value, aesthetic value, knowledge system and educational value, inspiration, sense of place, cultural heritage value, social relationship, and cultural diversity. As a result, target areas with large space and a good combination of nature environment and human environment received a high evaluation. Urban cemetery which is adjacent to residential areas needs to be managed taking a full advantage of its environmental conditions so that it can serve as a space which residents can have an easy access to and fully utilize.
This study shows that urban cemetery is an urban green of great importance which provides provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. Based on the result of the study, scope of study should be extended to an overall urban green, and a systemic management should be conducted considering services and surrounding conditions of target areas. In this way, urban green ecosystem services can be provided for citizens in a fair and equitable way, and thereby contributing to improvement of people’s welfare for urban green.