气候变化领域集成服务门户

Use of urban green infrastructure (GI) such as rain gardens, wetlands, and cisterns is a management option to provide ecosystem services such as storm-water detention, community green space, and pollinator habitat in urban core areas. It would be beneficial to efficiently and inexpensively characterize land parcels for GI suitability We hypothesize that the capability of urban soils to support green infrastructure might be adequately characterized by extant site land cover rather than comparatively expensive and slow soil sampling and testing. As a pilot study, we directly characterized soil taxonomic, physical, and chemical characteristics and measured the percentage of vegetated, bare, and paved land cover for perimeters and interiors of 62 vacant lots and city parks located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. All vacant lots and park areas were vegetated to some extent, and we were able. to relate surface vegetation to several soil properties. Our results indicate that vegetation is correlated to sandiness, drainage capability, and basic metrics of nutrient availability for these sites, and, that it might be possible with a group of such studies to identify a minimum suite of observations necessary to characterize urban lots in any city for GI suitability