Urban Trees and Ecosystem Disservices : a Pilot Study Using Complaints Records from Three Swedish Cities

Abstract

Past research on urban ecosystem performance has focused mainly on ecosystem services, rather than disservices. However, to justify and fully utilize urban ecosystems, it is important also to assess and minimize the disservices they provide. The aim of this pilot study in Sweden was to contribute to the emerging understanding of urban ecosystem disservices. The central research question focused on how complaint/comment recordings at municipal park departments could be used as a source of knowledge on urban tree disservices. Records obtained from the municipal park departments in the three largest cities in Sweden provided evidence of several types of disservices. However, they also had obvious shortcomings that would need to be resolved before they could be used more widely as a source of information on ecosystem disservices. Suggestions for improving the data are provided.

Keywords

Municipal; Public opinion; Sweden; Urban tree management

Published in

Arboriculture and urban forestry
2015, volume: 41, number: 4, pages: 187-193

SLU Authors

• Delshammar, Tim

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Östberg, Johan

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Palmér, Cecilia

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Future Urban Sustainable Environment (FUSE) (until Jan 2017)

Global goals (SDG)

SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities

UKÄ Subject classification

Landscape Architecture

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.48044/jauf.2015.018

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/67633