Document Type : Original quantitative and Qualitative Research Article

Authors

1 MSc, Environmental Pollution, Department of Environmental Sciences, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran.

2 Department of environmental sciences, Waste and Wastewater Research Center, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Parks play a crucial role in modern city structures, serving various ecological functions. This study investigates the role of urban parks in the spatial distribution of PM 2.5.

Materials and Methods: Using the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method, the daily values of the concentration of this pollutant, collected by 16 ground monitoring stations, were obtained for a full year from March 22, 2022, to March 20, 2023. Processing Landsat-8 satellite images, the entire green cover of Isfahan city was extracted. Subsequently, the annual concentration of this pollutant was mapped into a continuous map. 

Results: Based on the results, Region 11 in the northwest of the city showed the highest average concentration of PM2.5 in the amount of 62.047 and a standard deviation of 4.091 among the 15 urban regions of Isfahan, indicating high pollution levels in this region. The results of the correlation analysis (R2 = 0.203) between the annual concentration of PM2.5 and the total area of parks indicate that the greater the cumulative area of parks in an urban area, the lower the average concentration of PM2.5. The results showed that only the size of each park and its normalized difference vegetation index with the concentration of annual PM2.5 have a negative and significant correlation of -0.572 and -0.748, respectively, at the one percent level (p-value = 0.00).

Conclusion: In conclusion, it can be inferred that utilizing the natural filtration capacity of park vegetation and larger green spaces significantly improves air quality. 
 
Open Access Policy: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Keywords

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