IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/teepxx/v8y2019i4p413-428.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban natural capital accounts: developing a novel approach to quantify air pollution removal by vegetation

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Jones
  • Massimo Vieno
  • Alice Fitch
  • Edward Carnell
  • Claudia Steadman
  • Philip Cryle
  • Mike Holland
  • Eiko Nemitz
  • Dan Morton
  • Jane Hall
  • Gina Mills
  • Ian Dickie
  • Stefan Reis

Abstract

Air pollution presents a major risk to human health, resulting in premature deaths and reduced quality of life. Quantifying the role of vegetation in reducing air pollution concentrations is an important contribution to urban natural capital accounting. However, most current methods to calculate pollution removal are static, and do not represent atmospheric transport of pollutants, or interactions among pollutants and meteorology. An additional challenge is defining urban extent in a way that captures the green and blue infrastructure providing the service in a consistent way. We developed a refined urban morphology layer which incorporates urban green and blue space. We then applied an atmospheric chemistry transport model (EMEP4UK) to calculate pollutant removal by urban natural capital for pollutants including PM2.5, NO2, SO2, O3. We calculated health benefits directly from the change in pollutant concentrations (i.e. exposure) rather than from tonnes of pollutant removed. Urban natural capital across Britain removes 28,700 tonnes of PM2.5, NO2, SO2, O3. The economic value of the health benefits are substantial: £136 million in 2015, resulting from 900 fewer respiratory hospital admissions, 220 fewer cardiovascular hospital admissions, 240 fewer deaths and 3600 fewer Life Years Lost.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Jones & Massimo Vieno & Alice Fitch & Edward Carnell & Claudia Steadman & Philip Cryle & Mike Holland & Eiko Nemitz & Dan Morton & Jane Hall & Gina Mills & Ian Dickie & Stefan Reis, 2019. "Urban natural capital accounts: developing a novel approach to quantify air pollution removal by vegetation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(4), pages 413-428, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:8:y:2019:i:4:p:413-428
    DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2019.1597772
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21606544.2019.1597772
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/21606544.2019.1597772?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephen B. Stewart & Anthony P. O’Grady & Daniel S. Mendham & Greg S. Smith & Philip J. Smethurst, 2022. "Digital Tools for Quantifying the Natural Capital Benefits of Agroforestry: A Review," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-32, September.
    2. Ellen Banzhaf & Sally Anderson & Gwendoline Grandin & Richard Hardiman & Anne Jensen & Laurence Jones & Julius Knopp & Gregor Levin & Duncan Russel & Wanben Wu & Jun Yang & Marianne Zandersen, 2022. "Urban-Rural Dependencies and Opportunities to Design Nature-Based Solutions for Resilience in Europe and China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-25, March.
    3. Elias Naber & Rebekka Volk & Kai Mörmann & Denise Boehnke & Thomas Lützkendorf & Frank Schultmann, 2022. "Namares—A Surface Inventory and Intervention Assessment Model for Urban Resource Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-34, July.
    4. Alice Fitch & Rebecca L. Rowe & Niall P. McNamara & Cahyo Prayogo & Rizky Maulana Ishaq & Rizki Dwi Prasetyo & Zak Mitchell & Simon Oakley & Laurence Jones, 2022. "The Coffee Compromise: Is Agricultural Expansion into Tree Plantations a Sustainable Option?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-17, March.
    5. Alessio Russo & Wing Tung Chan & Giuseppe T. Cirella, 2021. "Estimating Air Pollution Removal and Monetary Value for Urban Green Infrastructure Strategies Using Web-Based Applications," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-17, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:8:y:2019:i:4:p:413-428. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/teep20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.