Urban expansion and sprawl lead to loss of green space. This has the potential to degrade natural capital and associated ecosystem services. Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are a planning tool to delineate where growth may or may not occur as a strategy to protect green and open space.However, how these policies impact ecosystem services is unknown, particularly across multiple years. Here we compare pairs of cities: one of which has a UGB and one that does not.Specifically, we analyzed the following city pairs: (1) Lexington, KY: Huntsville, AL and (2) Portland, OR: Denver, CO. We modeled the ecosystem services provided to each city, quantifying carbon storage, pollinator abundance, urban flood risk, and urban cooling. Our results show that UGBs succeed in preserving the ecosystem services, over time, at a higher and more predictable rate than cities that do not have a UGB. Change over time highlights the effectiveness of UGBs in preserving ecosystem services overall and concentrating loss of ecosystem service delivery within highly urbanized areas. We discuss how the data necessitates analyzing spatial and temporal trends together to incorporate starting values of ecosystem service function for comparison between case studies. Natural capital and its associated ecosystem services should be key criteria for assessing policies for urban planning and used to further implement laws and policies to enhance environmental and human health within urban areas.

中文翻译：

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将城市增长边界的空间和时间成功联系起来，以保护生态系统服务


城市扩张和无序扩张导致绿色空间的丧失。这有可能降低自然资本和相关生态系统服务。城市增长边界 (UGB) 是一种规划工具，用于描绘增长可能发生或不发生的区域，作为保护绿色和开放空间的策略。然而，这些政策如何影响生态系统服务尚不清楚，特别是多年来。在这里，我们比较了一对城市：其中一个有 UGB，另一个没有。具体来说，我们分析了以下城市对：(1) 肯塔基州列克星敦：阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔和 (2) 俄勒冈州波特兰：科罗拉多州丹佛。我们对向每个城市提供的生态系统服务进行了建模，量化了碳储存、传粉媒介丰度、城市洪水风险和城市降温。我们的结果表明，随着时间的推移，城市GB 成功地保护了生态系统服务，其速度比没有城市GB 的城市更高且更可预测。随着时间的推移而发生的变化凸显了城市GB在整体保护生态系统服务和集中高度城市化地区生态系统服务提供损失方面的有效性。我们讨论数据如何需要一起分析空间和时间趋势，以纳入生态系统服务功能的起始值，以便在案例研究之间进行比较。自然资本及其相关的生态系统服务应成为评估城市规划政策的关键标准，并用于进一步实施加强城市地区环境和人类健康的法律和政策。