Assessment of ecosystem services to reduce the level of dust pollution in the urban air along roads

Abstract

Air pollution by particulate matter PM10, PM2.5 is one of the aspects that determines the quality of the environment in cities. The general trend today is an increase in the share of road dust among anthropogenic sources of pollution. Removing dust from the air is one of the ecosystem services (ES) provided by urban green spaces (UGS). Currently, there is a lack of methods and technologies that would make it easy to determine the volume of ES both for a particular UGS and for the entire urban blue-green infrastructure (UGBI). The goal of the study is to develop a methodology for assessing of ES in reducing the levels of dust pollution in the city’s atmospheric air along roads. The assessment should take into account the condition of UGS and their effectiveness in air purification. The main factors that determine the differences in ES indicators are the power of the emission source, the specific features of PM redistribution in the air, and the characteristics of the green space. Therefore, the algorithm for assessing the volume of ES is to establish: the parameters of the primary pollution field PM2.5 and PM10; the effectiveness of the UGS in reducing pollution; and the volume of ES for air purification from dust. The main research method is geoinformation modelling, in particular, the processes of atmospheric dispersion of pollutants (based on LEDI). The source materials are: the boundaries of the UGS and roads extracted from the OpenStreetMap database; ESA WorldCover 2020 and Copernicus Land Cover, from which the qualitative characteristics of the UGS were obtained; aerological sounding data (University of Wyoming). A geodatabase was created in the study. The calculated indicators included in the database are the average annual values of PM10 and PM2.5 coming from roads, meteorological parameters of their redistribution, and the coefficient of air purification from dust (Idust_cleaning). The characteristics of the primary pollution field – Contpm10, Contpm2.5 and the efficiency of the function of reducing dust pollution of the UGS – Еdust_cleaning(2.5), Еdust_cleaning(10) were determined. Normalisation of efficiency values according to the Harrington desirability scale allowed us to calculate the volumes of the ES of cleaning urban air from dust (ESdust_cleaning). This assessment can become a tool for urban planning decisions, as it allows to identify the UGS that require priority actions to improve their dust removal capabilities.