PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Tim Delshammar
AU  - Johan Östberg
AU  - Cecilia Öxell
TI  - Urban Trees and Ecosystem Disservices—A Pilot Study Using Complaints Records from Three Swedish Cities
AID  - 10.48044/jauf.2015.018
DP  - 2015 Jul 01
TA  - Arboriculture & Urban Forestry (AUF)
PG  - 187--193
VI  - 41
IP  - 4
4099  - http://auf.isa-arbor.com/content/41/4/187.short
4100  - http://auf.isa-arbor.com/content/41/4/187.full
AB  - Past research on urban ecosystem performance has focused mainly on ecosystem services, rather than disservices. However, to justify and fully utilize urban ecosystems, it is important also to assess and minimize the disservices they provide. The aim of this pilot study in Sweden was to contribute to the emerging understanding of urban ecosystem disservices. The central research question focused on how complaint/comment recordings at municipal park departments could be used as a source of knowledge on urban tree disservices. Records obtained from the municipal park departments in the three largest cities in Sweden provided evidence of several types of disservices. However, they also had obvious shortcomings that would need to be resolved before they could be used more widely as a source of information on ecosystem disservices. Suggestions for improving the data are provided.