Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080

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Ecological Indicators
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Original Articles

Exploring temporal dynamics of urban ecosystem services in Latin America: T

The case of Bogota (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile)
⁎,1
Cynnamon Dobbsa, Ángela Hernández-Morenoa, , Sonia Reyes-Paeckea,b, Marcelo D. Mirandaa
a
Departamento de Ecosistemas y Medio Ambiente, Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860,
Santiago, Chile
b
Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable CEDEUS, Los Navegantes #1963, Providencia, Santiago, Chile

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Latin America is one of the most urbanized region in the world, where patterns of urbanization are disorganized
Urban-rural gradient and disjoint from urban planning, with unknown effects for ecosystem services (ES). We evaluated the ES in
Spatial patterns Bogota and Santiago for a 30-year period. Using remote sensing data, models and census data we quantified
Landscape metrics carbon regulation, climate mitigation and recreation potential. We assessed ES provision changes and their
Carbon
spatio-temporal patterns using landscape metrics. Urban vegetation patterns differ between the two cities be-
Urban ecology
cause of climate variability and greening policies. Bogota stored more carbon than Santiago given to climate
Recreation
effects, differences within city were the result of different policies and management. Climate mitigation showed
similar behavior for both cities, influenced by global climate, densification and urban sprawling. Recreation
potential increased in the inner-city and decrease at the outskirts, reflecting unplanned urban sprawling and
increase population. Areas of high ecosystem services connected for Bogota and fragmented for Santiago. Bogota
improved its environmental condition, as evaluated by ES provision, while Santiago worsens, even there was an
increased in vegetation cover. Vegetation cover was not a sufficient indicator for ecosystem services and the
distribution of it becomes highly relevant for informing mismatches between services and vegetation.

1. Introduction Convention on Biological Diversity, 2012). The ecosystem service fra-

More than 80% of the population in Latin America will be urban by
year 2050 (UN-Habitat, 2011), increasing the pressure on natural re-
sources. The explosive urban growth experienced during the twentieth
century had its peak in the 1980s, and started decreasing after reaching
2% nowadays (UN-Habitat, 2011). Unlike Asia and Africa, in Latin
America and the Caribbean the urban transition process has been ba-
sically completed, therefore the changes occurring in their cities are no
longer driven by population growth, but by income growth and public
policies (Inostroza et al., 2013; UN-Habitat, 2011). Latin America is a
showcase for processes that are triggered by housing deficit, lack of
social infrastructure, and by the need to improve the life quality of
people that still lives in poverty. The social, ecological and environ-
mental changes observed in the past three decades respond to a new
stage of urban development in this continent (UN-Habitat, 2011), and
could contribute to anticipate future urban processes for other world
regions.
Given this, it is important that urbanization integrates into its long-
term planning the management of ecosystem services (Secretariat of the
mework is successful at linking humans and nature with applicability
for conservation, planning and policy. Ecosystem services can be used
as a communicating and policy tool for managing urban ecosystems,
and can contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation (Secretariat of
the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2012). Urban ecosystem ser-
vices have been recognized as particularly relevant for improving
human well-being, some examples from emerging economies can be
found in Porras et al. (2013) and Fisher et al. (2014).
Ecosystem service mapping is one of the key elements to enable
decision-making and planning by recognizing their spatio-temporal
dynamics (Burkhard and Maes, 2017; Crossman et al., 2012; Egoh et al.,
2008; Peña et al., 2015; Troy and Wilson, 2006). There are several
approaches for ecosystem service mapping, including social values
(Bryan et al., 2010), distributions (Nelson et al., 2009), capacities,
economic values (Troy and Wilson, 2006), vulnerabilities (Schröter
et al., 2005), supply and demand (Burkhard et al., 2011), among others.
To improve urban planning is important to understand what are the
effects of urbanization, either sprawling or densification, on the pro-
vision of ecosystem service at multiple scales (Haase et al., 2014).

⁎
Corresponding author at: Av. Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile.
E-mail addresses: cdobbsbs@gmail.com (C. Dobbs), angelahernandez@uc.cl (Á. Hernández-Moreno).
1
Present address: Centro de Investigación en Ecosistemas de la Patagonia CIEP, Camino Baguales s/n., Coyhaique, Chile.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.11.062
Received 19 June 2017; Received in revised form 22 November 2017; Accepted 28 November 2017
Available online 08 December 2017
1470-160X/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C. Dobbs et al.
Temporal studies of urban ecosystem services can aid in realizing those
patterns, disclosing information on the consequences of urban growth
under local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions. This sort of re-
search has been scarcely addressed (Kroll et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2011)
and it has been mainly based on land use/land cover changes.
The availability of continuous data related with natural resources in
Latin America is scarce, therefore the use of remote sensing provides a
useful tool for quantifying ecosystem services dynamics in a spatially
explicit manner, and allows the comparison of how those services
changed over time. The quantification of the dynamics of ecosystem
services can be assess through landscape pattern metrics which can
inform on the variation along urban-rural and temporal gradients (Wu
et al., 2011). Frank et al. (2012) investigated the use of landscape
metrics for appraising the potential of landscape to deliver ESS,
showing that if landscape metrics are not considered, the potential of a
landscape to provide ESS can be overestimated. Fürst et al. (2013) used
a set of landscape metrics to assess the impact of land use patterns on
the potential of a region to provide ESS, and Frank et al. (2012) pre-
sented an approach on assessing landscape aesthetics with landscape
metrics.
The purpose of this study is to understand the provision of urban
ecosystem services and their spatio-temporal patterns occurring in the
last 30 years for two Latin American cities: Bogota, Colombia and
Santiago, Chile. Both cities are representative of the succession of ur-
banization processes that have occurred in Latin America, especially in
the 20th century and after (Inostroza et al., 2013). This urbanization
processes have left large areas of unplanned urbanization, with affluent
areas characterized by low residential densities and poor areas char-
acterized by social housing and self-constructed residences in high
densities, which has consequences for vegetation and ecosystem ser-
vices.
We build a spatially explicit index that estimates the service of
global climate regulation, microclimate mitigation and recreation po-
tential. We evaluate temporal changes in the provision of these eco-
system services along an urban-rural gradient. Landscape metrics were
used to assess spatio-temporal patterns on the ecosystem service index.
Results from this research can improve our understanding of urbani-
zation on ecosystem service supply in understudied countries, detecting
areas where environmental inequalities occur and relating them with
existing planning policies.
2. Methods
2.1. Study area
Bogota (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile) are capital cities and the
economic, cultural and political centers of their respective countries.
They are intermediate size metropolises with population between 6 and
10 million people (UN-Habitat, 2011). A summary of both cities char-
acteristics is detailed in Table 1.
Bogota and Santiago are representative of the rapid urbanization
processes, demographic transition and urban sprawl that characterize
current development of Latin American metropolises (Hernández-
Gómez et al., 2013; De Mattos et al., 2014). Urban expansion during the
20th century left large areas of unplanned urbanization between 1950
and 1980’s, lacking of infrastructure and main utilities on their begin-
nings (UN-Habitat, 2011). Since the 90’s both cities have a dual growth:
low density residential in affluent areas that include large greenspaces,
following North American suburbs patterns (Northern areas of Bogota
and Northwestern side of Santiago; UN-Habitat, 2011; Figs. 1 and 2).
The second growth pattern included densely urbanized areas of social
housing and self-constructions, where less affluent population estab-
lished. These peripheries lack of public greenspaces, but are common
on vacant areas, wetlands, hills and agricultural land (Southern and
northwestern periphery in Santiago and Bogota; Figs. 1 and 2). Both
cities showed three urbanization forms: axial, infill and isolated
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Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
Table 1
Population, socioeconomic data and built-up area Bogota and Santiago.
Bogota Santiago
Population (inhabitants) 4,225,649 (1985) 3,902,329 (1982)
7,878,783 (2014) 6,348,770 (2014)
Built-up area (km2) 302 (1988) 383.6 (1986)
385 (2015) 617.2 (2014)
Population density (inh/km2) 20,464 10,286
Population high income level (%) 4.4 11.3
Population medium income level (%) 45.2 45.7
Population low income level (%) 48.8 43
Administrative division 20 Localities 34 municipalities
Sources: Santiago population data INE Census 1982, 2002, projections 2002–2020;
Santiago Built up area 2000 Geo Santiago, PNUMA; Santiago Built up area 2014 own
data; Income level data Santiago Adimark S.A; Bogota: population data DANE, concilia-
tion census 1985–2005, Census 2005, projection 2006–2015. Bogota built-up area
Inostroza et al., 2013 (1988), Escobedo et al., 2016 (2015).
(Inostroza et al., 2013).
These cities have experienced population growth since the mid-
1990’s until the late 2000’s resulting in sprawled urbanizations with
similar population (approximately 7 million for Bogota and Santiago;
Inostroza et al., 2013). These cities are good case study for illustrating
socio-ecological-spatial patterns occurring in Latin American cities,
because both reflect the extreme income level disparities, socio-spatial
segregation and the presence of densely populated neighborhoods along
the urban periphery (Kabisch et al., 2012).
Bogota has an approximate area of 655 km2 and more than 7 million
inhabitants (www.dane.gov.co). The city is located at 2640 m.a.s.l, over
the Western Andes Mountain Range plateau. Bogota has a temperate
warm climate with tropical mountain vegetation type (Escobedo et al.,
2015), with mean annual temperatures ranging between 7 and 18 °C.
Rainfall is distributed throughout the year, with two main peaks be-
tween April-May and September–November reaching 1400 mm per
year (De las Salas and García Olmos, 2000). Bogotá accounts for 15% of
the population and contributes to more than 20% of national GDP.
During the past three decades population has increased from 4.22 to
7.88 million inhabitants, while the urban area has increased at a lower
rate from 302 km2 in 1988–385 km2 in 2015 (Inostroza et al., 2013;
Escobedo et al., 2015) reaching a population density of 20,464 inh./
km2. Along the urban boundaries, the main land uses are agricultural
crops, forest plantations and grasslands; in the Eastern Mountain range
there is a great diversity of native vegetation with remnant forests,
bushlands, and moorland in an altitudinal gradient. The Alcaldía Mayor
(Bogota Major City Hall) oversees the environmental policy of the city,
throughout its District Environmental Secretary (Secretaría Distrital de
Ambiente), that is responsible of the environmental policy and the city’s
Environmental Management Plan. In addition, the Botanical Garden
Jose Celestino Mutis, is the entity in charge of the design and im-
plementation of the city’s urban forest.
Santiago is in the central valley between the coastal and Andes
mountain range, with a mean altitude of 650 m.a.s.l. The climate is
temperate with dry summer (Csb) ranging between 8–30 °C. The annual
rainfall reaches 350 mm and is concentrated in the winter months (May
to September). Santiago concentrates 36% of the country’s population,
contributes for about 42% of national GDP (INE, 2015). Its adminis-
trative boundaries cover 2274 km2 of which 617 km2 correspond to
built-up areas. Between 1985–2014 population has increased from 3.9
to 6.3 million inhabitants (INE, 2015) reaching a population density of
10,287 in h./km2 in 2014 (Table 1). The urban area has increased at a
higher rate in the same period (from 383.6 to 617.2 km2), leading to a
decrease in population density (Inostroza et al., 2013). The environ-
mental policy of the city is overseen by several institutions including
the Ministry of Environment, the National Forest Corporation, the re-
gional government and all the municipalities within the city. The design
C. Dobbs et al. Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080

Fig. 1. Study area and urban-rural gradient buffers for the city of
Bogota, Colombia.

and implementation of the city’s urban forest is overseen by each mu- 2.2. Image processing
nicipality apart from large public parks which are the duty of the
Ministry of Housing and Development through its greenspace depart- Landsat imagery (30 m pixel resolution) was used to detect vege-
ment. tated and non-vegetated areas, to then estimate the supply of key urban

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Fig. 2. Study area and urban-rural gradient buffers for the city of Santiago, Chile.
ecosystem services (Table 2). The images chosen were cloud free, and
obtained from the Landsat archive (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). All
images had radiometric and atmospheric corrections, an important pre-
processing step for multi-temporal change detection (Chander et al.,
2009). The images were chosen on the period of the year with the
highest photosynthetic activity coinciding with the leaf on season of the
hottest time of the year. Dry season was used because the images were
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Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
cloud free and allow us to compare the different dates more robustly
given their more stable atmospheric factors. No images were selected
from years of strong ENSO effects. The years chosen reflects different
periods of urbanization: in the 80’s both cities are still compact and
growing by occupying rural areas adjacent to urban edge, in the early
2000 low-density suburban developments appeared and urbanization
extends in all directions, and in present times urban growth occurs by
C. Dobbs et al.
Table 2
Characteristics of the satellite imagery for temporal analysis of Bogota and Santiago.
City Year Satellite
Bogota 1985 Landsat 5 TM
2001 Landsat 5 TM
2014 Landsat 8
Santiago 1986 Landsat 5 TM
2000 Landsat 5 TM
2014 Landsat 8
infilling vacant lots remaining and new urban developments dispersed
in peri-urban fringe.
The red and infrared bands from the Landsat imagery were used to
obtain NDVI (Appendix A in Supplementary material), commonly used
for detecting biomass and photosynthetic capacity of vegetation and
widely used in urban areas (Dobbs et al., 2014; Faryadi et al., 2009).
The classification of the NDVI in vegetated and non-vegetated pixels
was based on the findings of (Stathopoulou et al., 2007), where va-
lues > 0.3 are consider vegetation and values < 0.3 are consider non-
vegetated. The cutoff values were chosen to minimize the existence of
mixed pixels (Stathopoulou et al., 2007). Pre-processing and image
classification was done in ENVI 4.7 (Exelis Visual Information Solu-
tions, Boulder, CO).
2.3. Quantification of ecosystem services
We selected the services of global climate regulation, microclimate
mitigation and recreation potential using NDVI and commonly used and
transferable methodologies (Dobbs et al., 2014).
Global climate regulation was selected because of its global impact
on climate (Strohbach and Haase, 2012) and linked to urban tree
carbon storage that can aid in reducing the effect of CO2 release to the
atmosphere. It was calculated using a model that relates NDVI with
carbon stored in urban trees of temperate US (Myeong et al., 2006). The
model has been validated for cities, and has been used to quantify urban
tree carbon for several cities around the world (Dobbs et al., 2014;
Hutyra et al., 2011; Poudyal et al., 2010). The model assessed the
functionality of the system and not its structure,
KgC ⎞
Carbon ⎛⎜ ⎟ = 107.2e
(NDVI * 0.0194)
⎝ pixel ⎠
Microclimate mitigation, assess as the reduction in temperatures by
the presence of vegetation becomes relevant under urban heat island
and air pollution (Larondelle and Haase, 2013). We used the Land
Surface Temperature product (LST) to evaluate the differences in tem-
perature throughout the city and between periods of time (Jenerette
et al., 2007). The calculation follows (Karnieli et al., 2010),
(LMAXλ − LMINλ )
Lλ = *(DN − QCALMIN ) + LMINλ
QCALMAX − QCALMIN
where LMIN and LMAX are the spectral radiances, QCALMAX/MIN is
the quantized calibrated pixel value in DN (Landsat 5 and 7
QCALMIN = 0, QCALMAX = 255; Landsat 8 QCALMIN = 1,
QCALMAX = 33518), DN is the pixel value and λ is the wavelength.
Then the brightness temperature is calculated as follows,
K2
T=
ln ( K1
Lλ )
+1
where K1 and K2 correspond to a coefficient determined by the effective
wavelength of the satellite sensor. For Landsat 5 TM K1 is 607.76
(Wm−2 sr−1 μm−1) and K2 is 1260.56 (Wm−2 sr−1 μm−1), for Landsat
8 K1 is 774.89 (Wm−2 sr−1 μm−1) and K2 is 1321.08
(Wm−2 sr−1 μm−1). Finally, the values of temperature are converted to
Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
Resolution Date
30 m multispectral pixel, 120 m thermal pixel (Band 6) 22nd March 1985
30 m multispectral pixel, 120 m thermal pixel (Band 6) 29th January 2001
30 m multispectral pixel, 100 m thermal pixel (Band 10) 1st January 2014
30 m multispectral pixel, 120 m thermal pixel (Band 6) 12th November 1986
30 m multispectral pixel, 120 m thermal pixel (Band 6) 18th November 2000
30 m multispectral pixel, 100 m thermal pixel (Band 10) 9th November 2014
Celsius.
Recreation is probably one of the most recognizable services asso-
ciated with urban areas, because it provides for mental and physical
enjoyment (Tzoulas et al., 2007). This study evaluates the recreation
potential (supply) and not the demand given the temporal dimension of
this research. We developed a recreation index that includes vegetated
areas over 1000 m2 because of their potential for multiple uses. Vege-
tated areas were obtained from the NDVI/image classification process.
To represent this service, it was important to relate vegetation to po-
tential users, linking vegetation to the amount of people by locality for
Bogota and municipality for Santiago. We account for the aggregation
of the vegetation patches and the amount of those within administrative
unit, by building a weighting factor as follows,
GAi NPi
RPi = *
Pi ENNi
where RP is recreation potential by administrative unit i, GA are the
sum of all vegetated patches area over 1000 m2, NP is the number of
patches, ENN is the Euclidean nearest neighbor distance between pat-
ches (m) and P accounts for the population existing in i. In this calcu-
lation, we assigned a value of zero to the green areas located outside the
administrative units of the city, such as rural and mountainous areas,
given that those areas lack or population and inaccessibility.
For comparing ecosystem service supply between cities and dates it
was important to re-scale the values for each service by the minimum
and maximum value obtained, reaching a scale from 0 to 100 for each
service. All services then were summed in one map by date as follows:
Ecosystem Service Index Datei = Global climate regulation + Microclimate
mitigation + Recreation potential
No weight was assigned to the services because preferences on those
were out of the scope of this manuscript. The range of the ES index goes
from zero when no services are provided in a pixel to 300 when the
maximum supply value for all services is reached. The differences be-
tween dates were spatially assessed using the subtraction of the stan-
dardized ecosystem service index to detect areas of increase and de-
crease of ecosystem services. All analyses were done in ArcMap 10
(ESRI, Redlands, Ca).
2.4. Urban-rural gradient analysis
We followed the classic urban-rural gradient analysis to identify and
evaluate the spatial variation of ecosystem service supply (Kroll et al.,
2012). This type of analysis is commonly used in urban studies for
understanding the changes in patterns and ecological processes due to
urbanization (Andersson et al., 2007; Larondelle and Haase, 2013). To
perform this analysis 5 km wide concentric rings from the city center
were created as follows 1) 5 K named city core, 2) 10 K named suburbs,
3) 15 K named peri-urban and 4) > 20 K named non-urban, this last
ring covers areas of prairies, agricultural land and natural forests. We
use these designated distances for comparison purposes to other urban
studies of flora, fauna and land surface temperature which have also
used the same distances (Clarkson et al., 2007; Hamer and McDonnell,
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2008; Kuang et al., 2014). For the city of Santiago, we used circular
rings, while for the city of Bogota semi-circles were used (Figs. 1 and 2).
The reason for using semi-circles in the case of Bogota is because the
location of the city center is by the eastern mountain range where no
urbanization occurs, so there was no point on analyzing that area. For
each ecosystem service the mean and standard deviation were calcu-
lated for each ring.
2.5. Socio-economic gradient analysis
For both cities, we analyzed the ecosystem service index occurring
in three socio-economic categories: high, medium and low income ac-
cording to the definitions given by the census of each country
(Escobedo et al., 2006). For Bogota, the income classification was done
by ‘localidades’ and for Santiago by ‘comunas’. The classification for
Santiago was the same as the classification made by Escobedo et al.
(2006) for the city. For Bogota, official data classify population in six
socioeconomic ‘estratos’ (1: low-low, 2: low, 3: medium-low, 4:
medium, 5: medium-high and 6: high income level) (Appendix B in
Supplementary material). In order to simplify the analysis, the socio-
economic strata of Bogota was grouped in three classes named low
strata including strata 1 and 2, medium strata including strata 3 and 4,
and high strata integrating strata 5 and 6.
2.6. Landscape patterns analysis
To understand the spatial patterns of urban ecosystem service
supply we quantified commonly used landscape and class metrics for
each concentric ring and for the whole city. The metrics included
number of patches, mean patch area, largest patch index, Euclidean
nearest neighbor and the Aggregation Index accounting for different
dimensions of the landscape, including measures of landscape compo-
sition, connectivity and configuration. In addition, these are some of the
most commonly used metrics in landscape ecology. A detailed de-
scription for each metric can be found in (McGarigal et al., 2012).
Calculations were done in FRAGSTATS V4.
To evaluate the spatial pattern of the ecosystem service index we
divided the index in three levels of provision: low (0–100), moderate
(100–200) and high (200–300). The purpose of this classification was to
evaluate changes in fragmentation (Fahrig, 2003), distribution and
composition of the service supply along the period of analysis.
3. Results
The spatio-temporal change of vegetation cover is presented in
Table 3. Bogota excluding the rural and natural areas in the gradient
(> 15 K), had a 28.6% vegetation cover in year 1985, and then de-
creased to 11.3% in 2001, to then have an increment to 27.4% in 2014.
In contrast, rural and natural areas (> 15 K) showed a reduction in
vegetation cover of almost 10% (Table 3). The largest shift occurred in
rural areas, while an increase in vegetation cover in year 2014 occurred
in the core area and the suburbs. Santiago, excluding rural and natural
areas in the gradient, had a vegetation cover of 3.2% on year 1986,
increasing to 4.2% in year 2000, and then decreasing to 3.6% in 2014.
The major increase in vegetation cover occurred in the natural area for
the whole analyzed period.
3.1. Global climate regulation
The total carbon stored by vegetation for the city of Bogota in 2014
corresponded to 23210 KT (699 MgCO2/ha), while the city of Santiago
stored, in 2014, 6929 KT (110 MgCO2/ha). Urban tree carbon storage
in Bogota showed two trends. Firstly, there was a decrease in carbon
storage from 21.2 MgC/ha in 1985–20.5 MgC/ha in 2001 to then in-
creased to 25.2 MgC/ha by year 2014, overriding the initial value by
16%. The largest gain for Bogota occurred in the core and suburbs,
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Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
while the least gain happened in the peri-urban area. Santiago had an
increase in urban tree carbon from 16.2 MgC/ha to 34.6 MgC/ha in the
period between 1985 and 2000; secondly, carbon dropped to 6.6 MgC/
ha from year 2000 to year 2014. For Santiago, the least loss occurred in
the city center, while the largest happened in the suburbs.
Overall, Bogota showed a positive spatio-temporal gradient for the
global climate regulation service, while Santiago showed the opposite
(Table 3).
3.2. Microclimate mitigation
Both cities showed different trends in terms of microclimate miti-
gation. Bogota had a decrease in temperature of 2 °C for the whole city.
In natural and rural areas (> 15 K from city center), the temporal
variability of temperature was less than the urban section.
Temperatures in Santiago increased temporally for all the buffers,
however, those increases were lesser in the city core and suburbs than
in the peri-urban area and natural and rural areas (Table 3).
3.3. Recreation potential
Bogota and Santiago showed a decreased in the recreation potential
for the whole city, with the largest decrease in the peri-urban and
natural areas. The city of Bogota, however, had a slight increase to-
wards the city core and suburbs. Santiago only showed an increased or
the city center, rising from 0.1 to 3.8 m2 per capita (Table 3).
3.4. Ecosystem service index
Ecosystem service supply for Bogota changed by −6% from year
1985 to year 2001, to then increased 15.2% between year 2001 and
2014 (from 131 to 151). The largest increased occurred in the city
center and suburbs, changing 15% and 10% respectively. On each
period, the peri-urban area is the section that provides more services
(159, 154 and 169 respectively). Bogota showed an increase in the
index for all the urban-rural gradient sections. The largest increment
occurred at the city center and the smallest increase happened in the
peri-urban area (Fig. 3).
Ecosystem service supply for Santiago showed a different trend to
Bogota. The overall value for ecosystem service supply decreased by
17% from year 1986–2014 (from 175 to 149), where the lowest supply
occurred at the city center, while the largest supply was in the suburbs
and peri-urban sections. The only increase in the index happened in the
suburbs, while the largest decrease occurred in the peri-urban area
(Fig. 4).
The spatial distribution of ecosystem service supply for both cities
appears in Figs. 3 and 4, disclosing their temporal dynamics. For Bo-
gota, the increase in ecosystem service supply can be interpreted as
having a poor supply in year 1985 close to the city center to an increase
of the supply across all the city for year 2014 (Fig. 3). There was a slight
decrease in the index towards the east of the city and the south, close to
the eastern mountain range. For Santiago, there was a reduction and
more heterogeneous distribution of the ecosystem service supply from
year 1986 to year 2014 (Fig. 4). The largest change occurred in the peri-
urban and natural area (Fig. 4).
The socio-economic analysis for the city of Bogota did not show
major differences in the value of the index for the period of analysis.
Changes in the value of the index between 1985 and 2014 showed an
increase for most localities and the magnitude of changes was similar
for all the socio-economic classes (Table 4). Lower strata showed an
improvement in the localities adjacent to rural and natural areas, al-
though two of the poorest localities (Localities of Bosa and Usme, Ap-
pendix B in Supplementary material) showed a decrease in the index
value.
Contrarily for Santiago, there are differences in the index according
to the socio-economic strata (Table 4). High income communes have
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Table 3
Vegetation cover and ecosystem services for the whole city and the urban-rural gradient of Bogotá and Santiago corresponding to three dates in a 30-year period. Standard deviation is
shown in parenthesis.

Bogotá Santiago

1985 2001 2014 1986 2000 2014

Vegetation cover (%)

Whole city 75.6% 54.9% 67.2% 45.1% 58% 57.8%
5K 15.8% 5.2% 16.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.4%
10 K 22.3% 7% 23.4% 2.2% 3.5% 2.4%
15 K 47.9% 21.8% 42.4% 7.2% 8.6% 8%
> 20 K 94% 73.9% 83.5% 35.4% 44.3% 46.6%

Global climate regulation (MgC/ha)

Whole city 21.2( ± 7) 20.6( ± 8) 25.2( ± 11) 16.2( ± 4) 24( ± 4) 6.8( ± 3.4)
5K 19.7( ± 3) 22.5( ± 4) 28( ± 7) 6.9( ± 0.8) 11.5( ± 1.8) 6.9( ± 2.8)
10 K 20.1( ± 4) 22.1( ± 4) 27.2( ± 6) 23.2( ± 1.1) 16.5( ± 2.3) 6.8( ± 2.8)
15 K 21.5( ± 5) 23.4( ± 4) 28( ± 7) 8.4( ± 4) 27.6( ± 3.3) 6.7( ± 3.7)
> 20 K 24.4( ± 5) 26.5( ± 5) 32.2( ± 6) 19.6( ± 5) 40.3( ± 4) 6.6( ± 3.2)

Micro-climate mitigation (Celsius)

Whole city 23( ± 5) 20( ± 4) 21( ± 5) 30( ± 2) 31( ± 5) 34( ± 4)
5K 24( ± 3) 21( ± 3) 26( ± 4) 32( ± 2) 33( ± 2) 35( ± 1)
10 K 25( ± 3) 22( ± 2) 26( ± 4) 30( ± 2) 32( ± 2) 35( ± 2)
15 K 26( ± 3) 22( ± 3) 24( ± 3) 28( ± 3) 30( ± 3) 34( ± 4)
> 20 K 22( ± 5) 20( ± 4) 21( ± 5) 28( ± 4) 29( ± 9) 34( ± 5)

Recreation Potential (m2/per capita)

Whole city 113( ± 161) 53.8( ± 73) 66.9( ± 82) 16.9 ( ± 480) 2.8( ± 1.2) 3.2( ± 3)
5K 4.8( ± 8.5) 2.8( ± 6.2) 6.7( ± 9.5) 0.7 ( ± 1.2) 0.1( ± 0.07) 3.8( ± 2)
10 K 6.2( ± 8.2) 0.8( ± 1.1) 7.6( ± 7.4) 9 ( ± 23) 0.5( ± 1.1) 1.3( ± 2.7)
15 K 131( ± 66) 54( ± 52) 77.7( ± 66) 12.9 ( ± 8) 3.9( ± 1.3) 3( ± 4)
> 20 K 309( ± 203) 158( ± 50) 175( ± 60.4) 72.4 ( ± 9) 6.5( ± 3) 4.5( ± 4)

the most improvement in the index value between years 1986 and
2014, with only one commune showing a decrease in the index. The
main decreases in the index occurred in the low-income communes,
where less than half of the communes showed an improvement in the
index.
3.5. Ecosystem service index landscape metrics
Table 5 illustrates the changes in landscape metrics in Bogota and
Santiago for the analyzed period, according to three ecosystem services
supply classes: low, moderate and high.
In Bogota, the percentage of the landscape covered by low and high

Fig. 3. Ecosystem service supply for the city of Bogotá (years 1985–2001–2014). The index is constructed by three ecosystem services: global climate regulation (regulation function),
micro-climate mitigation (regulation function) and recreation potential (cultural function). Urban-rural gradient buffers are added to facilitate analysis.

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C. Dobbs et al.
Fig. 4. Ecosystem service supply for the city of Santiago (years 1986–2000–2014). The index is constructed by three ecosystem services: global climate regulation (regulation function),
micro-climate mitigation (regulation function) and recreation potential (cultural function). Urban-rural gradient buffers are added to facilitate analysis.
class of supply varied, while for the moderate class the supply remained
similar. For the whole period of analysis, the low provision decreased in
6%, while the change for the high provision was positive, increasing by
7%. The patch number and the mean patch area showed similar trend,
the low provision class had a change in −45% and −17% respectively.
Contrary the high provision class change in +53% and 26% for the
number of patches and their mean area for the whole period of analysis.
The high provision largest patch increased in the same proportion
(∼4.5%) as the low provision largest patch decreased. The nearest
neighbor metric only showed a relevant change for the low provision
class, through an increase in the distance between patches of 17%,
while the other two classes (moderate and high) did not showed
changes over 5% (Table 5).
The percentage of landscape metric for Santiago changed largely for
the low and high provision classes, +41% and −34% respectively.
There was a considerable decreased in the number of patches for the
high provision class and an increased for the low provision class for the
whole period of analysis. The mean patch in the low provision class
duplicated its area between 1986 and 2014, while for the high provi-
sion class there was a reduction in 50% of the size. The largest patch
index increased its size by 30% in the low provision lass, while the
other two classes decreased their sizes around the 20%. The main
changes in the nearest neighbor distance occurred for the moderate and
high provision classes. The moderate class the distance to the nearest
patch of the same class doubled, while for the high class it had an in-
crement of 500 m (Table 5).
4. Discussion
Latin American research on urban ES can inform on the con-
sequences of unplanned urbanization and the effect of peri-urban in-
formal settlements by spatially and temporally determining the pre-
sence and quantity of ES.
Few studies have assessed these urban ecosystem services spatio-
temporal patterns in Latin America and the results showed that, even
Bogota and Santiago have similar historical origins; their urban vege-
tation dynamics are different, showing a possible effect of the climate
and governance.
The large reductions in vegetation cover in the most urbanized areas
of Bogota (core and suburbs) between years 1985 and 2001 could be
explained by the lack of continuity in the city governance and therefore
in the application of environmental policies. Between years 1985 and
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Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
2003 the city was governed by 10 different mayors from different po-
litical views with government cycles lasting 1 or 2 years. In 2002, this
changed and 4 years’ government periods were established leading to a
continuity in policies. Given this, Bogota showed a slight recovery in
vegetation cover because of strong public policies stated since the
2000’s as shown in Table 3. The largest changes in vegetation for both
cities occurred in the non-urban area and the suburbs. As Schneider and
Woodcock (2008) suggested, South American cities present a behavior
similar to United States cities, where most of the changes in the land-
scape occur at the fringe and near cities core.
4.1. Carbon regulation vs. climate, policies and management
When comparing carbon values between Bogota and Santiago it is
possible to distinguish a climate effect, with Bogota storing around 3
times more carbon than Santiago (≈23000KT vs 6900KT respectively
for year 2014). The spatial variation in both cities, however can be a
combine effect of green policies and management with climate, dis-
closed by the variability on storage within city, as shown by other
global studies (Dobbs et al., 2014).
Results showed that Bogota had values of urban tree carbon for
2014 (between 32–25 MgC/ha) similar to urban forests of subtropical
cities such as Gainesville, FL (Escobedo et al., 2010), Xiamen, China
(Ren et al., 2011) and cities in Korea (Jo, 2002). Clerici et al. (2016)
reported values of 6–50 MgC/ha in Bogotás peri-urban secondary for-
ests in the eastern and northern mountainous areas. Santiago values
(6.6 MgC/ha) for 2014 were more similar to other Mediterranean and
semi-arid urban forests, such as Barcelona (approx. 14 MgC/ha;
Chaparro and Terradas, 2009) and Arizona (4.4 MgC/ha; Nowak and
Crane, 2002), while Escobedo et al. (2016) reported values for Santiago
of 6–21 MgC/ha.
There was no clear link between vegetation cover and the urban tree
carbon stored for the two studied cities, our results do not show that
increases in vegetation resulted in increases in carbon stored (Table 3).
This could be explained by the vegetation condition, given that the
urban tree carbon model relies on NDVI, therefore the photosynthetic
capacity of woody vegetation. The decrease in carbon for Bogota was
associated with less vegetation cover, contrary to what happens for
Santiago. Even Santiago has an increased in vegetation cover there was
a decreased in carbon values for the last period of analysis, which could
be explain by temperature and precipitation effects. Since 2007, the
Mediterranean region of Chile has been subjected to a long period of
C. Dobbs et al. Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080

Table 4 and appearance of informal settlements. The temporal analysis showed

Distribution of ecosystem service index by income for each year of analysis. that Bogota increased its temperature difference between the urban
core and the natural area from 2 °C in 1985–5 °C in 2014, but kept it
City Income Locality/Comunne T1 T2 T3 Change T1-T3
under the lower bound of what has been shown for large cities (2–7 °C;
Bogota Low Bosa 159 169 153 −6 Seto and Shepherd, 2009). After 1985, there was a large increase in
Ciudad Bolivar 173 191 197 24 population derived from rural migration caused by armed internal
Rafael Uribe Uribe 107 117 131 24
conflicts affecting mainly peri-urban areas. This led to uncontrolled and
San Cristobal 150 172 168 18
Santa Fé 157 138 188 30 illicit urbanization around the peri-urban and rural and natural sections
Tunjuelito 106 115 142 37 affecting land use and therefore temperature (Escobedo et al., 2015).
Usme 175 180 174 0 Further from this, unplanned urban sprawling has occurred in the
Medium Antonio Nariño 94 106 118 24 natural areas, increasing impermeable surfaces and intensifying the
Barrios Unidos 130 92 130 0
urban heat island effect. On top of this there is a global effect of the
Candelaria 109 113 114 5
Engativa 153 160 169 16 ENSO phenomenon on the urban and natural temperatures (Golden,
Fontibón 175 166 174 0 2004), as can be seen by higher temperatures in rural and natural areas
Kennedy 141 151 158 17 between the years of analysis.
Los Martires 100 102 114 13
Similarly, Santiago was influenced by the same factors: global cli-
Puente Aranda 123 100 147 23
Suba 197 147 214 17 mate, densification and urban sprawling. The city showed a decreased
Teusaquillo 139 97 160 21 in temperature differences between the urban and rural and natural
High Chapinero 179 149 182 3 areas from 4 °C in 1986–1 °C in 2014, therefore urban sprawling and
Usaquen 192 146 200 7 densification occurring in the peri-urban and rural and natural areas
Santiago Low Quilicura 137 168 203 66 (Inostroza et al., 2013). Both cities showed similar patterns on the cli-
Pudahuel 234 184 194 −40 mate regulation service, however temperature values were much higher
Huechuraba 149 144 179 30
for Santiago. For this city, there was a cofound effect of Mediterranean
Conchali 135 149 105 −30
Recoleta 135 133 131 −4 climate together with uncontrolled urban sprawling (Inostroza et al.,
Renca 135 157 139 4 2013).
Cerro Navia 135 134 106 −29
Quinta Normal 135 133 117 −18
Lo Prado 133 111 119 −14
Estacion Central 134 129 133 −1
4.3. Recreation potential vs. population and policies
Pedro Aguirre Cerda 132 118 122 −10
Cerrillos 133 143 168 35 Urban ecology has shown that recreation is not only related to the
Lo Espejo 133 97 111 −22 quantity of green spaces but also to its distribution and accessibility and
La Cisterna 132 112 126 −6
the method used here accounts for all. Given that if green spaces are
La Granja 132 99 123 −9
San Ramon 131 97 113 −18 more separated in distance and are only in few patches then less people
El Bosque 133 115 146 13 might have access to them (Fuller and Irvine, 2010).
La Pintana 142 136 150 8 The city center for both cities showed an improvement in the re-
Puente Alto 141 154 154 13 creation service, with Bogota showing better values than Santiago. This
Medium Maipu 140 180 168 28
San Bernardo 137 178 198 61
could be explained by renovations occurring at the city center, where
Independencia 136 126 119 −17 public spaces regain terrain (Borsdorf and Coy, 2009). However, both
Santiago 134 127 119 −15 cities have values under the recommendation of other researchers
San Miguel 133 117 133 0 (Sukopp et al., 1995; Wang, 2009). Despite these values been under the
San Joaquin 134 111 103 −31
recommended, some studies showed that in Bogota people recognize
Macul 134 131 168 34
Peñalolen 135 146 153 18 and value the benefits of the green spaces existing adjacent to their
La Florida 130 141 145 15 houses (Parra et al., 2010; Scopelliti et al., 2016). In the suburbs of
High Lo Barnechea 230 178 197 −33 Santiago there was a decrease in the service given an increment of the
Vitacura 136 173 172 36 built-up area without increasing green spaces (Banzhaf et al., 2013).
Las Condes 132 167 151 19
La Reina 135 159 160 25
The peri-urban area had the highest value for this service coinciding
Ñuñoa 136 136 158 22 with high income areas, commonly known pattern from green spaces in
Providencia 134 142 143 9 Latin American cities.
In peri-urban and rural and natural areas both cities decrease the
value for this service, because of population growth and land use
change, leading to urban sprawling, more profoundly in Santiago than
drought because of La Niña (Roco et al., 2015), affecting the photo- in Bogota (Banzhaf et al., 2013; Inostroza et al., 2013). For both cities,
synthetic capacity of plants, factor affecting NDVI values (Karnieli the population doubled between years 1986–2014, without being ac-
et al., 2010). companied by adequate green space planning that would have ensured
the maintenance of this service in areas of new development. This si-
4.2. Climate regulation vs. urbanization tuation is less abrupt for Bogota, where strong initiatives of land re-
storation and reforestation have avoided a large loss of green spaces in
The presence of vegetation in urban areas influences the service of new development areas (Boletin REDCRE, 2015). This could be
climate regulation. In addition, there are other factors such as the showing that when having good policies in place, in addition to the
global climate phenomenon (ENSO), densification, increase impervious proper institutional capabilities, the supply of this service could be less
surfaces and urban sprawling can also affect temperatures (Golden, affected, even with increasing population. However, large values in the
2004; Zhou et al., 2011). peri-urban and rural and natural area in Bogota could be influenced by
Bogota showed the typical trend occurring in urban climate, where the existence of agricultural land and forests located at the fringes
higher temperatures occur in more urbanized areas (Coutts et al., (Fig. 1), confirmed by the large standard deviations for this service
2010). There was an increase in temperature between 1985 and 2014, (Table 3).
which is a combination of densification, increase impervious surfaces

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Table 5
Landscape metrics occurring in the urban-rural gradient and the whole city for Bogota (years 1985–2001–2014) and Santiago (years 1986–2000–2014).

Number of patches Mean patch area Largest patch index Nearest Neighbor Percentage of the landscape

Bogota Low provision 1985 6009 2.7 4.9 91.5 13.7

Moderate provision 1985 2301 43.6 80 77.5 82.3
High provision 1985 1764 2.6 0.7 111.6 3.9

Low provision 2001 5456 5.5 6 82.2 24.7

Moderate provision 2001 3996 22.4 69.5 79.7 73.4
High provision 2001 1084 2.0 0.8 125.6 1.7

Low provision 2014 4155 2.4 0.7 110.6 8.1

Moderate provision 2014 2058 47.6 78.8 80.5 80.2
High provision 2014 3793 3.7 5.6 106 11.3

Santiago Low provision 1986 348 3.3 0.3 439.6 0.5

Moderate provision 1986 681 216.6 63.9 155.9 64.3
High provision 1986 1618 50 21.7 85.6 35.2

Low provision 2001 3979 38.8 64.2 77.1 66.2

Moderate provision 2001 13254 5.7 11.5 98.2 32.4
High provision 2001 2117 0.7 0.03 110.2 0.64

Low provision 2014 1339 70.2 29.9 345.9 41.7

Moderate provision 2014 853 150 49.1 336.6 56.7
High provision 2014 149 25.7 0.3 521.6 1.7

4.4. Ecosystem service index spatio-temporal pattern
The socio-economic analysis of the ecosystem service index for
Bogota did not show any effect in their magnitude and distribution.
This result could be influence by the scale of analysis done at the lo-
cality level, different from the socioeconomic strata which covers only a
block. This scale effect does not allow for the index of ecosystem service
to clearly show the effects of socioeconomics on the provision of eco-
system services in Bogota which is highly fragmented. This socio-
economic fragmentation can be observed in Appendix B in
Supplementary material where one locality could have 2 opposed strata
(Localidad Antonio Narino and Usme, Appendix B in Supplementary
material) or even 6 different socioeconomic strata (Localidad de
Chapinero, Suba and Usaquen). According to our scale of analysis,
improvements that occurred in the lower economic strata in the
mountainous region could be due to changes in climate more than a
socio-economic effect. Increases of the index in the urban core and
suburbs could be due to afforestation programs on public green spaces.
Contrarily, Santiago showed a socioeconomic effect, where social
inequalities matched environmental inequalities represented by lower
provision of ecosystem services. Ecosystem service index for Santiago
became worst in the communes from lower socio-economic classes,
resulting from low greening budgets, high density urbanization and a
dry landscape. More affluent areas showed an increase of ecosystem
service index, where the only decrease occurred in a peri-urban com-
mune subjected to urbanization in the last 15 years. The decrease of the
index in centric communes could be the result of urban renewal policies
implemented in the early 90s, which promoted high-rise apartments to
avoid the loss of population in the city center (Banzhaf et al., 2013) and
poor public environmental policies (Romero et al., 2012). The different
patterns of fragmentation occurring in the suburbs, peri-urban and non-
urban areas of Bogota and Santiago could be explained by their dif-
fering informal settlement patterns. Bogota has a larger presence of
informal settlements than Santiago (13% and 8% respectively). The
spatial distribution of those settlements also differs among cities, while
Bogota’s informal settlements appear compact, Santiago’s informal
settlements showed a highly fragmented and diffuse pattern (Inostroza,
2017) affecting differently the spatial distribution of ES.
In Fig. 5 we can distinguished that the amount vegetation cover
alone is not a sufficient indicator for ecosystem service provision and
that the distribution and condition of the vegetation becomes also
important factors that can inform on mismatches between both. For
example, in the city center of Bogota there was an increased in vege-
tation cover of less than 5% and an increased in ecosystem service index
of nearly 20%, while for Santiago there was an increased in vegetation
cover by 50% in the city center, and a decreased of the ecosystem
service index of nearly 10% (Fig. 5).
Bogota and Santiago showed different spatio-temporal patterns of
fragmentation of ecosystem services, this could be linked to the model
describe by Borsdorf and Coy (2009) for the fragmentation of Latin
American cities, where the fragmentation is result of social inequalities.
Bogota decreased its fragmentation for the high service provision class,
while Santiago showed an increased for the same class. This shows that
ecosystem services can respond differently to fragmentation (Mitchell
et al., 2015). The temporal pattern of ecosystem service supply for
Bogota and Santiago showed that fragmentation is not always negative,
and that the fragmentation of vegetation does not always result in a
fragmentation of the service.
Spatio-temporal patterns for Bogota showed that areas with low
service provision class fragmented, while the areas of high provision
class decreased their fragmentation (Table 5). Bogota had an im-
provement of its environmental condition, due to the increased of the
high provision patches and decreased of their fragmentation. This could
reflect the good environmental public policies that have been applied in
the last years (see previous section). Santiago showed the opposite re-
sults, where there was a fragmentation of the high provision class and a
decreased in the fragmentation of the low provision class (Table 5).
Santiago had a detriment of its environmental condition, due to the
fragmentation of the high provision class. However, this is not only the
reflection of weak environmental public policies but also a consequence
of global climate change (ENSO), where by year 2014, the city had been
subjected to long drought period (Roco et al., 2015). For both cities,
there was a positive outcome of transformation, i.e. the spatial dis-
tribution of ecosystem services become more equal, where high provi-
sion class patches can be found in all the urban-rural gradient and not
only restricted to the peri-urban and rural and natural areas (Figs. 3 and
4).
To understand the differences in the spatio-temporal dynamics of
ecosystem services, further from climate differences, for both cities it is
necessary to recognize the different institutional structure that both
cities have. As a capital city Bogota is governed by the “Alcaldía
Mayor”, institution that integrates the administration and governance

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C. Dobbs et al.
Fig. 5. Temporal changes relative to the latest year on the ecosystem services index and vegetation cover along an urban-rural gradient for the cities of Bogota and Santiago. The
ecosystem service index is composed by values for global climate regulation, micro-climate mitigation and recreation potential. Positive values indicate an increased in ecosystem service
index or vegetation cover in the period of analysis.
of 20 localities. On the contrary, Santiago does not have a unique
government that rules all the municipalities of the city; comprising 34
administrative units with their own mayor, independency in adminis-
tration and management (Escobedo et al., 2006). The institutional
structure of Bogota delivers same policies and visions for the develop-
ment of the whole city, while for Santiago this is fragmented and sev-
eral policies and the management is differently decided for the 34
municipalities, increasing heterogeneity of development.
4.5. Limitations and future research
All the methods used in this study have the purpose of assessing the
general trend in the provision of ecosystem services for both cities in an
understudied region, that said, we noted that there are limitations in
our analysis given the available data and model utilized. We note, that
the scale of analysis is not going to inform on which type of vegetation
is providing the service or on who is receiving the service, the resolu-
tion of the Landsat (30 × 30 m pixel) does not allow distinguishing
between a tree or grass, or the type of land use that is around a patch of
vegetation. More detail studies on ES should include a less sparse
analysis and better spatial resolution.
The quantification of ES can also be improved by using locally de-
veloped carbon models and finer resolution data that are able to dis-
tinguish the type of vegetation storing the carbon (Clerici et al., 2016).
In addition, it needs to be recognized that the model is based on tem-
perate urban forests and only accounts for tree aboveground carbon,
disregarding the other forms of carbon dynamics (i.e. belowground
carbon, soil carbon, among others). The assessment of recreation po-
tential could be improved by crossing the Landsat data with an eleva-
tion model to discard inaccessible mountainous areas. The inclusion of
information on the ownership of green spaces could refine this service
by disregarding privately own spaces not necessarily available to all the
public. Ancillary data from surveys can be added to the recreation in-
dicator to more effectively measure the use of those green spaces.
That said we find our approach plausible in that other studies use
methods that are more difficult to replicate given the scarcity in tem-
poral and spatial data. Similarly, the use of available model facilitates
the comparison of our results to other cities from previous studies. Such
info can be used as reference pints or baselines to assess the dynamics of
urban ecosystem services in Latin America and how unplanned urba-
nization leads to decline of ecosystem services.
5. Conclusion
This exploratory research is one of the few attempts addressing
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Ecological Indicators 85 (2018) 1068–1080
spatio-temporal variation of ecosystem services and urbanization in
Latin America, shedding some light on the consequences of rapid urban
growth in highly dynamic and unplanned urban systems. This spatial
approach could inform better planning for the reduction of environ-
mental inequalities, one of the main issues in Latin American countries.
This study allows understanding the changes in temporal patterns of
ecosystem services in urban landscapes, using the landscape ecology
framework. The recognition of patterns of ecosystem services is re-
levant because they reflect the social conditions and the environmental
public policies; reflect the social hierarchies and social activities.
Both Latin American cities showed different urban growth dy-
namics, but both showed the influence of urbanization and climate. The
consequences of urban migration and lack of planning caused different
patterns in the ecosystem service index for both cities resulting from
different governance systems, Bogota a more integrative system and
Santiago a more independent local government system.
Results from this study discloses that future research should aim at
integrating more social variables in the analysis of ES, such as the
governance system, real estate market, among others. This will enable a
better understanding of ES positive interactions between the social and
ecological dimensions of urban development, by identifying causal re-
lationships and not just patterns.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the
online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.11.062.
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