Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Soils and Their Assessment: a Review

Abstract

The history of the development of the concept of urban soil services, their current list, anthropocentric and pedocentric approaches to their assessment, and experience of application in various cities are considered. At present, the concept of ecosystem services is a comprehensive tool that allows, by analogy, to translate soil information into the sphere of management decision-making, as well as to maintain the sustainability of urban ecosystems by introducing measures to preserve urban soil services. Despite the accumulated experience in methods for assessing ecosystem services and examples of their application in urban planning in individual cities, there is no unified approach to assessing the services of urban soils. The widespread application of this concept is often hampered by insufficient knowledge of the properties of urban soils with their high spatiotemporal variability, as well as by the insufficient development of the approach itself for assessing soil services. However, the active development of theoretical and practical approaches to integrating information about soil characteristics into management is a prerequisite for optimizing the system of soil resource management in cities and towns.