Estimation of the marginal effect of urban vegetation on the removal of PM2.5 in Medellín, Colombia.

Authors

  • Daniela Velásquez Ciro University of Antioquia, Colombia
  • Julio Eduardo Cañón Barriga University of Antioquia, Colombia
  • Isabel Cristina Hoyos Rincón University of Antioquia, Colombia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46380/rias.v2i2.50

Keywords:

air pollution, tree cover, UFORE model.

Abstract

At present, the city of Medellin, in Colombia, has a chronic air quality problem. An alternative to reduce the effects of such contamination is to increase tree-lined areas. In this work, the marginal effect of the increase in urban tree cover on the removal of PM2.5 was estimated. In this sense, it uses the UFORE methodology to calculate the removal of this contaminant in a distributed manner over the city, using Sentinel 2A satellite images to identify the coverage and estimate the Foliar Area Index (IAF), which is an input Important for calculations. The records of stations in 2017 were taken as a base. When calculating the removal of PM2.5 for the base condition, a value close to 83 t was found for the entire metropolitan area and 3 t for Medellin. When the total tree area is increased by 1% proportionally throughout the city, the value of the removal increases by 1%. On the other hand, by locating arborization in the areas with the highest concentration of the pollutant, the total removal has an increase close to 1.6%, which would imply that the arborization decision must be prioritized in those places to be effective. Likewise, it was preliminarily estimated that optimizing tree cover IAF may be more effective in removal than increasing urban tree area, although other tree benefits should be taken into account for planting decisions.

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Published

2019-12-27

How to Cite

Velásquez Ciro, D., Cañón Barriga, J. E., & Hoyos Rincón, I. C. (2019). Estimation of the marginal effect of urban vegetation on the removal of PM2.5 in Medellín, Colombia. Iberoamerican Environment & Sustainability Journal, 2(2), 61-70. https://doi.org/10.46380/rias.v2i2.50

Issue

Section

Management of environmental risks and climate change