Abstract
Long-term management of urban parks is critical to maintaining urban sustainability. Regular examination of tree attributes is essential to maintain healthy tree growth, enabling them to deliver regulating ecosystem services (RES). Here, we examined the five-year changes, from 2019 to 2024, in RES and the monetary values provided by urban trees in Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park in Bangkok, Thailand. Using the i-Tree Eco model, we evaluated changes in canopy attributes and three RES: carbon sequestration, air purification, and stormwater runoff reduction. While the total monetary value of RES increased by 126% to 3,491 USD y− 1 in 2024, 37% of the original trees were lost due to mortality and management practices, resulting in an annual monetary loss of 886 USD y− 1. Evergreen trees showed greater increases in canopy attributes and RES compared to deciduous trees. The study revealed that the mortality rate was more than double the default rate assumed in common forecasting models, primarily due to human management rather than natural causes. The findings point out the need to consider human intervention in urban forest management and emphasize that while urban parks have substantial potential for providing ecosystem services, improper management can significantly impair their long-term ecological and economic benefits.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets collected and analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
References
Chiesura, A. The role of urban parks for the sustainable City. Landsc. Urban Plann. 68, 129–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.08.003 (2004).
Wolch, J. R., Byrne, J. & Newell, J. P. Urban green space, public health, and environmental justice: the challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’. Landsc. Urban Plann. 125, 234–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.01.017 (2014).
De Groot, R. S., Alkemade, R., Braat, L., Hein, L. & Willemen, L. Challenges in integrating the concept of ecosystem services and values in landscape planning, management and decision making. Ecol. Complex. 7, 260–272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2009.10.006 (2010).
Costanza, R. et al. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387, 253–260. https://doi.org/10.1038/387253a0 (1997).
Tzoulas, K. et al. Promoting ecosystem and human health in urban areas using green infrastructure: A literature review. Landsc. Urban Plann. 81, 167–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2007.02.001 (2007).
Nyelele, C., Kroll, C. N. & Nowak, D. J. Present and future ecosystem services of trees in the Bronx, NY. Urban Forestry Urban Green. 42, 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2019.04.018 (2019).
Haase, D. et al. A quantitative review of urban ecosystem service assessments: Concepts, Models, and implementation. AMBIO 43, 413–433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0504-0 (2014).
Bowler, D. E., Buyung-Ali, L., Knight, T. M. & Pullin, A. S. Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence. Landsc. Urban Plann. 97, 147–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.05.006 (2010).
Escobedo, F. J., Kroeger, T. & Wagner, J. E. Urban forests and pollution mitigation: analyzing ecosystem services and disservices. Environ. Pollut. 159, 2078–2087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2011.01.010 (2011).
Gill, S. E., Handley, J. F., Ennos, A. R. & Pauleit, S. Adapting cities for climate change: the role of the green infrastructure. Built Environ. 33, 115–133. https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.33.1.115 (2007).
Yarnvudhi, A. et al. Evaluation of regulating and provisioning services provided by a park designed to be resilient to climate change in Bangkok, Thailand. Sustainability 13, 13624. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413624 (2021).
Singkran, N. Evaluating urban park ecosystem services and modeling improvement scenarios. Heliyon 9 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22002 (2023).
Amini Parsa, V., Salehi, E., Yavari, A. R. & van Bodegom, P. M. Analyzing Temporal changes in urban forest structure and the effect on air quality improvement. Sustainable Cities Soc. 48, 101548. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2019.101548 (2019).
i-Tree Tools. Using the Forecast Model. (2016).
Fini, A. et al. Effects of different pruning methods on an urban tree species: A four-year-experiment scaling down from the whole tree to the chloroplasts. Urban Forestry Urban Green. 14, 664–674. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2015.06.011 (2015).
Nowak, D. J. Understanding i-Tree: 2021 Summary of programs and methods. (2021).
Thai Meteorological Department. Meteorological measurement and statistics service. (2024).
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. Green Bangkok 2030 developing Bangkok to the green city, (2021). https://www.c40.org/case-studies/the-green-bangkok-2030-project/
Yarnvudhi, A., Leksungnoen, N., Tor-ngern, P. & Premashthira, A. Ecosystem culture services evaluating: A case study on willingness to pay for urban green area in Bangkok, Thailand. Thai For. Ecol. Res. J. 8, 351–370 (2024).
QGIS Development Team. QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation Project (2024). Available at https://www.qgis.org/en/site/. (accessed 10 October 2024).
Curtis, J. T. & Mcintosh, R. P. The interrelations of certain analytic and synthetic Phytosociological characters. Ecology 31, 434–455 (1950).
i-Tree Tools. i-Tree Eco Field Guide. (2021).
Schomaker, M. Crown-condition classification: a guide to data collection and analysis. (2007).
Nowak, D. J. Estimating leaf area and leaf biomass of open-grown deciduous urban trees. For. Sci. 42, 504–507 (1996).
Nowak, D. J. Brooklyn’s urban forest. 290 (2002).
Nowak, D. J. et al. A ground-based method of assessing urban forest structure and ecosystem services. Arboric. Urban Forestry (AUF). 34, 347–358 (2008).
Nowak, D. J. Atmospheric carbon dioxide reduction by Chicago’s urban forest. Chicago’s urban forest ecosystem: Results of the Chicago urban forest climate project, 83–94 (1994).
Cairns, M. A., Brown, S., Helmer, E. H. & Baumgardner, G. A. Root biomass allocation in the world’s upland forests. Oecologia 111, 1–11 (1997).
Chow, P. & Rolfe, G. Carbon and hydrogen contents of short-rotation biomass of five hardwood species. Wood Fiber Science. 21, 30–36 (1989).
Hirabayashi, S., Kroll, C. N. & Nowak, D. J. i-Tree eco dry deposition model descriptions. Citeseer: Princeton, NJ, USA (2012).
Hirabayashi, S. i-Tree Eco precipitation interception model descriptions. US Department of Agriculture Forest Service: Washington, DC, USA 1, 0–21 (2013).
Yang, Y., Endreny, T. A. & Nowak, D. J. iTree-Hydro: snow hydrology update for the urban forest hydrology model 1. JAWRA J. Am. Water Resour. Association. 47, 1211–1218 (2011).
Interagency Working Group. Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon. Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis under Executive Order: 12866 (2010).
McPherson, E., Simpson, J., Peper, P., Crowell, A. & Xiao, Q. Northern California coast community tree guide: benefits, costs, and strategic planting. (2009).
U.S. EPA. Environmental benefits mapping and analysis program (BenMAP). (2012).
R Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. (2021).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Miss Thanchanok Khoonnarong, Miss Pacharaporn Kadthip, Miss Pimonpan Phakdee, Miss Phakhwan Sukarin, and Mr. Ratchanon Ampornpitak for field assistance. We appreciate the staff of CU100 Park and PMCU (Property Management Chulalongkorn University) for their approval. Nichaphan Kasikam is funded by The Second Century Fund (C2F), Chulalongkorn University, and the International Postgraduate Program in Hazardous Substance and Environmental Management, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University. The National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT), Chulalongkorn University (N42A660392), and the Thailand Science Research and Innovation Fund of Chulalongkorn University fund this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
N. Kasikam participated in conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing the original draft, and revising the manuscript. P. Tor-ngern participated in conceptualization and provided supervision in analysis and interpretation, writing, reviewing, and editing. A. Yarnvudhi, N. Leksungnoen, and T. Näsholm contributed to reviewing and commenting on drafts and the final version of the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Kasikam, N., Yarnvudhi, A., Leksungnoen, N. et al. Effects of long term canopy change on regulating ecosystem services in a tropical urban park. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36098-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36098-w
