Assessing Ecosystem Services Provided by Rural and Urban Green Areas at Territorial Scale. The Case of the Local Park GruBrìa (Monza and Milan Provinces, Italy)

The significant expansion of cities and the resulting uncontrolled land take determine the loss of green areas both inside the city than in the surrounding rural areas. Rural and urban green spaces are essential for maintaining local ecosystems and providing a significant number of benefits to the community. Green Infrastructure (GI) is an effective tool to achieve these objectives. The study, developed in the municipalities of the Local Park of Supra-municipal Interest (LPSI), called GruBrìa, aims to develop a methodology suitable for identifying a green infrastructure based on the evaluation of ecosystem services provided by existing rural and urban green areas. The identified methodology is based on the assessment of provisioning (Productive), regulating and maintenance (Ecological), and cultural (Recreational) ecosystem services. Finally, the methodology combines the indices related to the three categories of ecosystem services to identify areas to be protected with a green infrastructure.