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Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems
Urbanization is widely presumed to degrade ecosystem services, but empirical evidence is now challenging these assumptions. We report the first city-wide organic carbon (OC) budget for vegetation and soils, including under impervious surfaces. Urban soil OC storage was significantly greater than in...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23236585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00963 |
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author | Edmondson, Jill L. Davies, Zoe G. McHugh, Nicola Gaston, Kevin J. Leake, Jonathan R. |
author_facet | Edmondson, Jill L. Davies, Zoe G. McHugh, Nicola Gaston, Kevin J. Leake, Jonathan R. |
author_sort | Edmondson, Jill L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Urbanization is widely presumed to degrade ecosystem services, but empirical evidence is now challenging these assumptions. We report the first city-wide organic carbon (OC) budget for vegetation and soils, including under impervious surfaces. Urban soil OC storage was significantly greater than in regional agricultural land at equivalent soil depths, however there was no significant difference in storage between soils sampled beneath urban greenspaces and impervious surfaces, at equivalent depths. For a typical U.K. city, total OC storage was 17.6 kg m(−2) across the entire urban area (assuming 0 kg m(−2) under 15% of land covered by buildings). The majority of OC (82%) was held in soils, with 13% found under impervious surfaces, and 18% stored in vegetation. We reveal that assumptions underpinning current national estimates of ecosystem OC stocks, as required by Kyoto Protocol signatories, are not robust and are likely to have seriously underestimated the contributions of urban areas. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3520025 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-35200252012-12-12 Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems Edmondson, Jill L. Davies, Zoe G. McHugh, Nicola Gaston, Kevin J. Leake, Jonathan R. Sci Rep Article Urbanization is widely presumed to degrade ecosystem services, but empirical evidence is now challenging these assumptions. We report the first city-wide organic carbon (OC) budget for vegetation and soils, including under impervious surfaces. Urban soil OC storage was significantly greater than in regional agricultural land at equivalent soil depths, however there was no significant difference in storage between soils sampled beneath urban greenspaces and impervious surfaces, at equivalent depths. For a typical U.K. city, total OC storage was 17.6 kg m(−2) across the entire urban area (assuming 0 kg m(−2) under 15% of land covered by buildings). The majority of OC (82%) was held in soils, with 13% found under impervious surfaces, and 18% stored in vegetation. We reveal that assumptions underpinning current national estimates of ecosystem OC stocks, as required by Kyoto Protocol signatories, are not robust and are likely to have seriously underestimated the contributions of urban areas. Nature Publishing Group 2012-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3520025/ /pubmed/23236585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00963 Text en Copyright © 2012, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Edmondson, Jill L. Davies, Zoe G. McHugh, Nicola Gaston, Kevin J. Leake, Jonathan R. Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title | Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title_full | Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title_fullStr | Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title_full_unstemmed | Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title_short | Organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
title_sort | organic carbon hidden in urban ecosystems |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23236585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00963 |
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