The role of urban vegetation ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate changes is largely recognized and many projects and initiatives have been dedicated to this issue in Europe in the last years while their multiple impacts on air quality are less known. Some projects are proposing Nature-Based-Solutions (NBS - actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems, that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits) to improve air quality in the cities and many of them are using vegetation.
With this survey, we aim to collect information about the past and ongoing initiatives and projects you know regarding vegetation/NBS and air quality.
This work is carried out in the framework of VEG-GAP Project (LIFE18 PRE IT 003,
https://www.lifeveggap.eu). The VEG-GAP project aims developing a strategy for providing new reliable information in support of designing urban Air Quality Plans (AQPs) considering the urban vegetation ecosystems characteristics such as plant type, green area extension, etc. The main goals are to make available for the first time a framework of instruments (guidelines, support tools and information platform) that consistently consider the linkages between air pollution and vegetation characteristics in the development of effective control strategies and to provide recommendations for improving the legislation aimed to maintain and improve air quality in European cities.
