INVESTIGATING THE PROVISION CHAIN OF CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM SERVICES FOR HUMAN HEALTH IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS

• Grant number: 23/16181-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2024
• End date: November 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Jean Paul Walter Metzger
• Grantee: Douglas William Cirino
• Supervisor: L Roman Carrasco
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/15785-7 - Relating the provision of cultural ecosystem services with human health in urban landscapes, BP.DR

Abstract

The association between human health and nature is well established in the scientific literature. This positive association is usually attributed to the provision of ecosystem services (ES), particularly cultural ES as recreational and aesthetic services. However, in urban areas, the provision of those services can be limited since the contact with nature can be scarce, leading to the extinction of the experience of nature. Furthermore, the provision of ES depends on the flow between demand and supply areas, but the quantification of these flows and the benefits of nature are still poorly understood. Here, we aim to model the flow and provision of three cultural ES (aesthetic/scenic ES in streets, the recreational and restorative potential of urban parks) and to relate them to the mental and cardiovascular health of an urban population. To do so, we will produce spatially explicitly models considering the ES flow and the health of the patients. We will construct scenarios of different distances from the house of the patients while controlling for the supply of aesthetic/scenic beauty offered by the streets of the city.The flow will be the amount of service that the patients reach from theirs houses. For the recreational and restorative ES, we will evaluate the flow given by the time of movement between the houses and the parks of the city by participants, and model how much the patients can receive from each ES. With those analysis we are going to construct generalized mixed-effects models between the cardiac and psychological conditions of the patients and the flows of ES. The results will allow us to understand the connection between supply and demand of cultural ES and health conditions, contributing for urban planning and decision-making of the offer of nature-based solutions in cities.