earticle

영어

The increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon and fine particulate matter (PM) is a cause of serious climate change. To solve the challenges facing society, research is being conducted on the reduction effect according to the function of greenspace. The subject of this study is street trees, a public greenspace The purpose of this study was to quantify the carbon uptake and PM2.5 reductions in an urban street in Gangneung, Korea. A total of 42 streets were sampled applying a systematic sampling method to survey tree-planting structures. The mean tree density and cover in the study streets were 0.9 ± 0.1 trees/100 m2 and 11.2 ± 1.4%, respectively. The annual carbon and PM2.5 reductions per unit area by the trees averaged 1.1 ± 0.2 t/ha/yr and 4.1 ± 1.3 kg/ha/yr. The annual carbon emissions from the energy consumption of transport and the annual PM2.5 emissions from transport were 121 t/yr and 26 t/yr in the study city, respectively. Gangneung’s urban street trees annually offset the carbon emissions by 3.8% and the PM2.5 emissions by 4.8%. Thus, urban street trees played an important role in reducing the atmospheric carbon and PM2.5 concentrations. This study is expected to contribute to sharing the importance of urban street trees and their contribution to carbon and PM2.5 reductions.