Varanasi: Urban green spaces, especially public parks, can play an important role in global carbon sequestration, a vital ecosystem service for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and the effects of climate change, says a study by a team of Banaras Hindu University’s international researchers including Dr Jay Prakash Verma and his student Dr Durgesh Kumar Jaiswal.
Published in internationally reputed scientific journal ‘Nature Climate Change’ the findings of the study suggested that urban green areas, including parks and gardens, are a fundamental part of cities and are, on many occasions, the only contact that humans have with nature. These urban green spaces provide us with a myriad of ecosystem services, from training our immune system and promoting physical and mental health to regulating heat waves and floods, which are especially important in the current context of urbanization.
A senior assistant professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, BHU, Verma and his student Jaiswal carried out this study as a part of the URBANFUN project of the BBVA Foundation awarded to Dr Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo and other twenty institutions from different countries have participated in the project including India. BHU’s contribution to this research was funded by Department of Science and technology (DST), Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB) Government of India and the university’s Institution of Eminence Initiative.
Regarding the study, Verma said, the urban green spaces play an important role in global carbon sequestration, a vital ecosystem service for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and the effects of climate change. “The carbon stored in our parks also contributes to the maintenance of soil biodiversity and facilitates the sustainability of our parks, which means less expenditure for the public coffers”, he said adding until now, the quantity, controlling factors and sensitivity of carbon to global warming in urban green areas had not been evaluated, which meant considerable uncertainty in future predictions about the magnitude of carbon sequestration in these ecosystems.
This research includes samples from 56 cities across all continents, said Verma adding, “Our study shows that urban parks in green spaces around the world have an equivalent amount of carbon in the soil to natural areas near our cities, highlighting the role of our parks in a context of climate change.” Furthermore, the research highlights that the carbon stored in natural areas and urban parks are controlled by similar climatic factors. “Warmer cities have lower soil carbon content in urban parks and natural ecosystems, which is not good in our fight against climate change in a warmer world,” said Verma
The study also shows that carbon in cities and natural areas are regulated by different biological factors. The carbon of natural areas is closely related to the primary productivity of the ecosystem, while soil microbes are particularly important in explaining the carbon of parks and gardens. In this framework, ecosystem management (e.g. mowing) plays a fundamental role in explaining carbon sequestration in urban green spaces, he added.
“Our study demonstrates the importance of parks as carbon reservoirs in an urbanized world, where 7 out of 10 people will live in cities by 2050. Future parks and urban policies should take into account the soil microbiome to maintain soil carbon and its capacity to maintain multiple ecosystem services as well as the sustainability of our parks,” said Verma.
Published in internationally reputed scientific journal ‘Nature Climate Change’ the findings of the study suggested that urban green areas, including parks and gardens, are a fundamental part of cities and are, on many occasions, the only contact that humans have with nature. These urban green spaces provide us with a myriad of ecosystem services, from training our immune system and promoting physical and mental health to regulating heat waves and floods, which are especially important in the current context of urbanization.
A senior assistant professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, BHU, Verma and his student Jaiswal carried out this study as a part of the URBANFUN project of the BBVA Foundation awarded to Dr Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo and other twenty institutions from different countries have participated in the project including India. BHU’s contribution to this research was funded by Department of Science and technology (DST), Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB) Government of India and the university’s Institution of Eminence Initiative.
Regarding the study, Verma said, the urban green spaces play an important role in global carbon sequestration, a vital ecosystem service for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and the effects of climate change. “The carbon stored in our parks also contributes to the maintenance of soil biodiversity and facilitates the sustainability of our parks, which means less expenditure for the public coffers”, he said adding until now, the quantity, controlling factors and sensitivity of carbon to global warming in urban green areas had not been evaluated, which meant considerable uncertainty in future predictions about the magnitude of carbon sequestration in these ecosystems.
This research includes samples from 56 cities across all continents, said Verma adding, “Our study shows that urban parks in green spaces around the world have an equivalent amount of carbon in the soil to natural areas near our cities, highlighting the role of our parks in a context of climate change.” Furthermore, the research highlights that the carbon stored in natural areas and urban parks are controlled by similar climatic factors. “Warmer cities have lower soil carbon content in urban parks and natural ecosystems, which is not good in our fight against climate change in a warmer world,” said Verma
The study also shows that carbon in cities and natural areas are regulated by different biological factors. The carbon of natural areas is closely related to the primary productivity of the ecosystem, while soil microbes are particularly important in explaining the carbon of parks and gardens. In this framework, ecosystem management (e.g. mowing) plays a fundamental role in explaining carbon sequestration in urban green spaces, he added.
“Our study demonstrates the importance of parks as carbon reservoirs in an urbanized world, where 7 out of 10 people will live in cities by 2050. Future parks and urban policies should take into account the soil microbiome to maintain soil carbon and its capacity to maintain multiple ecosystem services as well as the sustainability of our parks,” said Verma.