Ageing well in the urban environment: meeting the health and social needs of older Adults - study protocol for a prospective, longitudinal mixed-methods study.

Background: Urbanisation and ageing populations are global challenges for ageing well. This mixed-methods study examines the health and social needs of older adults in urban areas in Berlin, Germany and in Singapore, focusing on three key dimensions of healthy ageing and wellbeing: health, mobility, loneliness, and equity as a cross-cutting theme.

Methods: The design follows a mixed-methods approach combining a quantitative longitudinal cohort study with qualitative interviews.

Global synthesis and regional insights for mainstreaming urban nature-based solutions.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as a key strategy for sustainably addressing multiple urban challenges, with rapidly increasing knowledge production requiring synthesis to better understand whether and how NbS work in different social, ecological, economic, or governance contexts. Insights in this Perspective are drawn from a thematic review of 61 NbS review articles supported by an expert assessment of NbS knowledge in seven global regions to examine key challenges, fill gaps in Global South assessment, and provide insights for scaling up NbS for impact in cities. Eight NbS challenges emerged from our review of NbS reviews including conceptual, thematic, geographic, ecological, inclusivity, health, governance, and systems challenges.

Towards transformative change for biodiversity: What can we learn from case studies in Germany?

Current human activities have led to fundamental changes in ecosystems, including the loss of biodiversity, which increasingly leads to irreversible negative impacts on society. Although called for in many policy documents, the debate on how to initiate, promote and specifically support socio-ecological transformations for the conservation and restoration of biodiversity is still in its early stages. So far, efforts to protect biodiversity were only partially successful.

Relationships between urban green space types, cultural ecosystem services and disservices - a Public Participation Geographic Information System study in Zagreb, Croatia.

Urban green spaces are important providers of ecosystem services in cities, however cultural ecosystem services remain difficult to quantify. Different types of urban green spaces provide various cultural ecosystem services and differ in how they are perceived and utilized by citizens. In this study, we used a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) survey to collect data on citizens' perceptions and use of cultural ecosystem services and disservices provided by different types of urban green spaces in Zagreb, Croatia.

Integration of high-resolution data for a complementary assessment of forest dynamics in Europe.

This study addresses the need for a cohesive pan-European forest monitoring system by developing a methodological framework to generate and provide spatially explicit and complementary indicators of forest dynamics. Utilizing Copernicus High-Resolution Layer Tree Cover Density data, we operationalize two key indicators-forest extent and condition-essential for robust forest monitoring across Europe. Our multi-step data processing methodology enhances data interoperability and usability, mitigating biases.

Ten steps towards integrated decision making for ecological restoration in cities: Rewilding the European beaver (Castor fiber) in Berlin, Germany.

Ensuring a livable city for all within the more-than-human discourse, restoration of urban ecosystems requires careful consideration of both human and non-human needs. However, traditional assessments and therefore most management plans usually fail to include the latter as a core planning requirement. This article presents and explains a 10-step method which simultaneously and actively considers both to identify potential restoration areas within urban ecosystems.

Evaluating the impact of landscape configuration, patterns and composition on land surface temperature: an urban heat island study in the Megacity Lahore, Pakistan.

The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is negatively impacted by rapid urbanization, which significantly affects people's everyday lives, socioeconomic activities, and the urban thermal environment. This study focuses on the impact of composition, configuration, and landscape patterns on land surface temperature (LST) in Lahore, Pakistan. The study uses Landsat 5-TM and Landsat 8-OLI/TIRS data acquired over the years 2000, 2010 and 2020 to derive detailed information on land use, normalized difference vegetation index, LST, urban cooling islands (UCI), green cooling islands (GCI) and landscape metrics at the class and landscape level such as percentage of the landscape (PLAND), patch density (PD), class area (CA), largest patch index (LPI), number of patches (NP), aggregation index (AI), Landscape Shape Index (LSI), patch richness (PR), and mean patch shape index (SHAPE_MN).

The benefits and disbenefits associated with cultural ecosystem services of urban green spaces.

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) and disservices shape landscape planning policy to a huge extent. We focus on the benefits and disbenefits associated with CES. The study aimed to explore the co-occurrence of the benefits and disbenefits associated with CES as well as the relationship between spatial and landscape characteristics and specific benefits and disbenefits.

Heterogeneous effects of the availability and spatial configuration of urban green spaces on their cooling effects in China.

The impacts of the availability and spatial configuration of urban green spaces (UGS) on their cooling effects can vary with background climate conditions. However, large-scale studies that assess the potential heterogeneous relationships of UGS availability and spatial configuration with urban thermal environment are still lacking. In this study, we investigated the impacts of UGS availability and spatial configuration on urban land surface temperature (LST) taking 306 cities in China as a case study covering a multi-biome-scale.

Ecological monitoring of urban thermal field variance index and determining the surface urban heat island effects in Lahore, Pakistan.

Lahore is the second major metropolitan city in Pakistan in terms of urban population and built-up area, making the city a more ideal place to form the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effects. In the last two decades, the considerable land-use conversion from a natural surface (vegetation) and permeable (waterbody) surface into an impervious (built-up area) surface has lead to an increase in land surface temperature (LST) in Lahore. The human thermal comfort (HTC) of the residents is also impacted by the higher LST.

A trait-based typification of urban forests as nature-based solutions.

Urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) are important tools for climate change adaptation and sustainable development. However, achieving both effective and sustainable UF-NBS solutions requires diverse knowledge. This includes knowledge on UF-NBS implementation, on the assessment of their environmental impacts in diverse spatial contexts, and on their management for the long-term safeguarding of delivered benefits.

Reinforcing nature-based solutions through tools providing social-ecological-technological integration.

While held to be a means for climate change adaptation and mitigation, nature-based solutions (NbS) themselves are vulnerable to climate change. To find ways of compensating for this vulnerability we combine a focused literature review on how information technology has been used to strengthen positive social-ecological-technological feedback, with the development of a prototype decision-support tool. Guided by the literature review, the tool integrates recent advances in using globally available remote sensing data to elicit information on functional diversity and ecosystem service provisioning with information on human service demand and population vulnerability.

Measuring spatio-temporal heterogeneity and interior characteristics of green spaces in urban neighborhoods: A new approach using gray level co-occurrence matrix.

Urban green space (UGS) is a complex and highly dynamic interface between people and nature. The existing methods of quantifying and evaluating UGS are mainly implemented on the surface features at a landscape scale, and most of them are insufficient to thoroughly reflect the spatial-temporal relationships, especially the internal characteristics changes at a small scale and the neighborhood spatial relationship of UGS. This paper thus proposes a method to evaluate the internal dynamics and neighborhood heterogeneity of different types of UGS in Leipzig using the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) index.

Analysis of differences and commonalities in wildlife hunting across the Africa-Europe South-North gradient.

Hunting and its impacts on wildlife are typically studied regionally, with a particular focus on the Global South. Hunting can, however, also undermine rewilding efforts or threaten wildlife in the Global North. Little is known about how hunting manifests under varying socioeconomic and ecological contexts across the Global South and North.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of and attitudes towards urban forests and green spaces: Exploring the instigators of change in Belgium.

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted our society, producing drastic changes in people's routines and daily mobility, and putting public spaces under a new light. This paper starts with the premise that the use of urban forests and green spaces - where and for who they were available and accessible - increased, when social restrictions were most stringent. It takes an explorative approach to examine changes in attitude towards urban forests and urban green spaces in terms of attraction (i.

Can improving the spatial equity of urban green space mitigate the effect of urban heat islands? An empirical study.

The role of urban green space (UGS) in mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effect has been demonstrated in a growing body of literature. However, the potential influence of the spatial equity of UGS distribution on the UHI effect has largely been overlooked. The present study aims to identify this potential influence using the spatial equity of UGS and the land surface temperature (LST) as measures of UGS spatial distribution and UHIs, respectively.

Urban green space interaction and wellbeing - investigating the experience of international students in Berlin during the first COVID-19 lockdown.

This qualitative study explores the topic of mental health/wellbeing with reference to exposure to urban green space (UGS). It builds on previous research, which has highlighted the potential for green space interaction for supporting positive emotional and mental wellbeing, particularly in times of stress and uncertainty. Using this basis, the paper explores whether UGS interaction also helped to mitigate the negative mental health impacts brought about by the first COVID-19 lockdown.

Identifying Spatial Patterns and Ecosystem Service Delivery of Nature-Based Solutions.

Compared to technical infrastructure, nature-based solutions, NBS, strive to work with nature and to move beyond business-as-usual practices in order to address societal challenges such as flood risks. This research aims to spatially identify possible NBS areas and evaluate the areas capacity to provide selected ecosystem services, ES, for the Lahn river landscape in Germany. The research follows the functional landscape approach using hydromorphological landscape units, HLU, based on specific biophysical spatial criteria, such as slope, to then identify locations which may be considered suitable for NBS.

Creating accessible evidence bases: Opportunities through the integration of interactive tools into literature review synthesis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that an immediate access to relevant information is key for timely interventions and forming of public opinion and discourse. In this regard, dashboards present themselves as invaluable tools for the democratization of data and for the creation of accessible evidence bases. Building on this momentum, it is proposed to integrate interactive means such as dashboards into academic literature review synthesis, in order to support the summarization, narration, and dissemination of findings, and furthermore, to increase transparency and support the transferability and comparability of findings.

COVID-19 pandemic observations as a trigger to reflect on urban forestry in European cities under climate change: Introducing nature-society-based solutions.

COVID-19 pandemic observations triggered a reflection by the author on urban forests in European cities under climate change as nature-society-based solutions. This commentary introduces a complementary triad of approaches that are all known but might lead to a novel view of urban nature, including forests, regarding changes in pandemic diseases and/or related to urbanization and climate change: Hybridity, succession, and flexibility: First, allowing for green spaces used by humans and nature but also those that are exclusively for ecosystems to provide space for undisturbed development and thus better control pests and diseases. Second, allow for succession at urban open spaces to let nature experiment on solutions for a drier and hotter climate that urban society can implement in urban forestry.

Integrating solutions to adapt cities for climate change.

Record climate extremes are reducing urban liveability, compounding inequality, and threatening infrastructure. Adaptation measures that integrate technological, nature-based, and social solutions can provide multiple co-benefits to address complex socioecological issues in cities while increasing resilience to potential impacts. However, there remain many challenges to developing and implementing integrated solutions.

Continuous integration in urban social-ecological systems science needs to allow for spacing co-existence : This article belongs to Ambio's 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Urbanization.

Urbanization brings benefits and burdens to both humans and nature. Cities are key systems for integrated social-ecological research and the interdisciplinary journal of Ambio has published ground-breaking contributions in this field. This reflection piece identifies and discusses integration of the human and natural spheres in urban social-ecological research using the following foundational papers as important milestones: Folke et al.

Methodology for development of a data and knowledge base for learning from existing nature-based solutions in Europe: The CONNECTING Nature project.

Within CONNECTING Nature, we are dealing with developing innovative nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change adaptation, health and well-being, social cohesion and sustainable economic development in European cities. In order to enable "learning by comparing" and "generating new knowledge" from multiple NBS related studies, a novel data and knowledge base is needed which requires a specified methodological approach for its development. This paper provides conceptual and methodological context and techniques for constructing such a data and knowledge base that will systematically support the process of NBS monitoring and assessment:•A methodology presents the comprehensive, multi-step approach to the NBS data and knowledge development that helps to guide work and influence the quality of an information included.

Prediction of soil organic carbon and the C:N ratio on a national scale using machine learning and satellite data: A comparison between Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and Landsat-8 images.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C:N) are the main indicators of soil quality and health and play an important role in maintaining soil quality. Together with Landsat, the improved spatial and temporal resolution Sentinel sensors provide the potential to investigate soil information on various scales. We analyzed and compared the potential of satellite sensors (Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3) with various spatial and temporal resolutions to predict SOC content and C:N ratio in Switzerland.