Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

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Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters) by Author "Friemond, Joseph"

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    Quantifying and Mapping Urban Ecosystem Services in Johannesburg, South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Friemond, Joseph
    Modern cities face a wide range of challenges such as flooding and heat stress, which are driven by urbanisation and exacerbated by the impacts of climatic change. The ecosystem services provided by green spaces in cities have become a crucial element in addressing these challenges by supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation. The first step in maintaining and improving the supply of these services is their quantification and mapping. However, large knowledge gaps exist in South Africa and Johannesburg relating to the provision of urban ecosystem services. This study aimed to quantify the supply of three important urban ecosystem services (carbon storage, runoff retention and cooling) and map their distribution across the wards of Johannesburg. Carbon storage was quantified through field sampling of four urban forest types (roadside trees, parks, gardens and nature reserves) and the use of biomass equations. InVEST's urban flood risk mitigation model was used to quantify runoff retention, while cooling was quantified by deriving land surface temperatures from Landsat satellite imagery, which were then used as inputs for a cooling indicator. All three services were mapped across the wards of Johannesburg and then normalised for comparison. The results revealed that Johannesburg's urban forest stores 2.4 million tonnes of carbon, with significant differences in carbon storage between forest types. Johannesburg’s ecosystem services provide great value in mitigating urban challenges, retaining 20.9 million m3 of runoff during a 50 mm storm, and providing cooling services across most of the city. However, the supply of these services is unequal, with large spatial disparities between the northern and southern regions in the city. Numerous wards receive critically low supply of these services, making them vulnerable to the impacts of climatic change. The northern- central wards have optimal supply of all three services, highlighting synergies between services. Ultimately, these three services have immense value in the Johannesburg context and play key roles in supporting the city’s climate change mitigation and adaptation, through the multi-functional delivery of ecosystem services from urban green infrastructure. By mapping these services at the ward scale, our findings can be used to accurately inform authorities and decision makers of priority areas for intervention, as well as key areas for conservation