Impact of land cover change on urban tree cover and potential regulating ecosystem services: the case of Aydın/Turkey.

The availability of urban tree cover (UTC) is one of the most important components of healthy urban environments that support the provision of many ecosystem services. The development in Turkey keeps going within/around urban environments, and the degradation and loss of urban vegetation and associated ecosystem services continues. In this study, we aimed to assess the impacts of land cover change on UTC and ecosystem services provided by them in the case of Efeler District, in Aydın Province of Turkey between 2004 and 2021. The ecosystem services and benefits estimated with the i-Tree Canopy tool includes carbon sequestration and storage as well as the removal of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, PM2.5 and PM10 as well as their economic valuation. Our results show that there was a decline trend in UTC between the years of 2004 and 2021. The loss of UTC was caused by the combined effects of new development pressure in and around the natural/semi-natural and agricultural areas, as well as the new reconstruction sites around old settlements. During the last 17 years, the loss of 61.38 ha UTC created a decrease in the carbon and air pollution benefits and economic valuation estimates. It would be premature to make direct use of our results in planning, without further analysis of the composition and age structure of tree/shrub species. However, the approach used in this study does demonstrate the principle and potential nature of such a methodology where comprehensive analysis are limited by the lack of sufficient data, time and labour.