The ecosystem service of forests improving air quality: A literature review

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rice, Connor. Masters of Natural Resources. The Ecosystem service of forests improving air quality: A literature review Air pollution regulation by forests helps to reduce the economic and human health impacts of damaging airborne particles. A variety of methods have been used to help study the economic impacts of forests regulating air quality. On average, forests improve air quality by up to 2%. But this improvement in air quality, when studied on a large scale, is millions of tons of air pollutants (including SO2, NO2, O3, CO, and Particulate Matter under 10μm). These millions of tons of pollutants are worth billions of dollars in the United States alone. Urban forests have the most economic impact because of their proximity with humans, but on a larger scale rural forests uptake more pollutants. Finally, the use of mapping techniques to show study locations and present data enables the ability to quickly observe differences between locations within the same study, or differences between studies at the same location.