Categorizing Urban Green Spaces and their Ecosystem Services within Minneapolis
Urban green spaces (UGS) provide several unique services in a city setting. Does the land use and management strategies of UGS in Minneapolis affect what kinds of services they can provide? UGS are an abstract concept with no set universal definition. This gives us the freedom to define green spaces within the context of Minneapolis. In this project, we define UGS as all publicly accessible vegetated land within the city boundary of Minneapolis, including public parks, university grounds, recreational trails, informal trails, cemeteries, and golf courses. We intentionally excluded incidental vegetation such as linear tree boulevards or private lawns, larger areas such as highway buffers and artificial (“astroturfed”) sports arenas, from our definition. This is due in part to both practical constraints and the pattern of collective UGS having a greater contiguous surface within our study area. Using ArcGIS Pro, geospatial datasets from the City of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Geospatial Commons, and 1m NAIP imagery from USGS Earth Explorer, we digitized and classified the different kinds of UGS within Minneapolis. These spaces are identifiable through municipal land-use data and high-resolution aerial imagery. To better understand the impact of UGS on the surrounding landscape, we will conduct a literature review of ecosystem services provided by organisms and/or structures within. In addition, we will review the available management plans for these UGS to identify how human governance affects the ability of UGS to provide certain services (e.g. mitigating urban heat islands, urban pollutants). From there, we will create a simplified model to weigh the net positive and negative effects of these green spaces within the urban fabric of Minneapolis.