Title: Applying Recovered Nutrients and Pruning Waste to Enrich and Regenerate Agricultural Soils in Urban Agriculture: Effects on Emissions and Yield of Spinach and Sweet Potato / Nutrient recovery from urban waste can substitute chemical fertilizers, but nutrient cycling in depleted soils can be ineffective. A promising strategy is the incorporation of unstable, carbon-rich biomass waste, which can regenerate soil while closing carbon and nutrient loops.
Title: The role of soil moisture and shading in influencing the capacity of urban street trees to reduce heat stress / Street trees can significantly reduce urban heat through shading and transpirative cooling, but their effectiveness may be compromised during heat waves with dry soil conditions. This study assesses the cooling potential of street trees using a modified BEP-Tree model.
Title: Adapting urban areas to rising temperatures: strategies to reduce heat and vulnerability in a warming world / The need for cities to prepare for the increasing frequency, persistence, and intensity of heat waves (HWs) makes modeling these events essential for evaluating the effectiveness of heat adaptation strategies in the near future.
Title: Effect of land use changes on air quality: Impacts of urbanization, urban vegetation, and agriculture / Urbanization transforms natural landscapes into impervious surfaces, altering local climate and air quality. Greening strategies are increasingly adopted to mitigate these effects, yet their efficacy depends on complex interactions among land use, urban form, geography, and climate.
Title: Assessing the Short-Term Air Quality Health Impact from Land-Use Changes During Heatwaves: A Health Impact Assessment in Barcelona Metropolitan Area / Heatwaves amplify air pollution, increasing public health risks, particularly in urban areas where land use influences the distribution of pollutants. This study examines the short-term health effects of air pollution during a two-week heatwave in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area under different land use scenarios
Title: A Social-Ecological-Technological Vulnerability Approach for Assessing Urban Risks. Case Study of the Hydrological System of Barcelona, Spain / As urban populations continue to increase throughout the 21st century, a greater number of people are anticipated to face risks associated with extreme climate events. This study explores the intricate nature of water-related risks to urban communities through a Social-Ecological-Technological Systems framework.
Gara Villalba contributed to Session 11 at the ICOS Cities event "Science meets City 2024": Quantification of urban greenhouse gas emissions - from novel monitoring to source identification. She presented the greenhouse gas monitoring network deployed by the URBAG group in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona.
Title: Effect of Land Use Changes on Air Quality: Impacts of Urbanization, Urban Vegetation, and Agriculture / Rapid urbanization in urban areas is transforming natural landscapes into impervious surfaces, resulting in changes to the physical properties of these surfaces. Changes in surface physical properties impact local temperature and convection, which in turn affects air quality.
Title: The food-water-climate nexus of green infrastructure: Examining ecosystem services trade-offs of peri-urban agriculture/ Emission reduction, heat mitigation, and improved access to water and food provision are increasingly critical challenges for urban areas in the context of global climate change adaptation and mitigation. The revival of local agricultural production is often lauded as a potential nature-based solution.
Title: Determining the Intensity of Future Heatwave Episodes at Urban Scales: A Case Study of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona / Given that more than half of the world’s population currently resides in cities, further understanding of the potential impact of future climate change on urban areas is needed. We thus simulate future heatwave (HW) episodes in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (AMB) using the pseudo global warming dynamic downscaling method.