HORTS4U

Urban gardens are multifunctional green spaces of the urban landscape, with an important role for biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services, favoring the creation of friendly cities. Urban gardens are related to key green planning concepts, such as green infrastructure and ecosystem services, but also to other important EC challenges, such as urban regeneration or nature-based solutions. Recently, in Catalonia, several citizen observatories have been developed, but the implication of a more inclusive view and filling in the information gaps, such as management data or evaluation of pollutants in urban gardens, are still missing. Air quality in Barcelona has been, since the end of the 1970s, one of the main environmental problems of the city, as it is the case of most large urban agglomerations worldwide.

In this line, we propose a work to evaluate the heavy metal contamination of the network of Urban Gardens of Barcelona.This is a new approach for Barcelona, ​​which encourages the creation of an updated and high-quality database on the biodiversity and ecosystem services of these green spaces and helps managers to find new planning and action strategies. On the other hand, these data on the pollution of the urban gardens (samples of the edible part of the plant, leaves, fruits, rhizomes etc.) are of clear interest for public health.