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1. Who has nature during the pandemic? COVID-19 cases track widespread inequity in nature access across the United States

   Spotswood, E. ( February 2021 , Research square)

   null (Ed.)

   Urban nature can alleviate distress and provide space for safe recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nature is often less available in low-income and communities of color—the same communities hardest hit by COVID-19. We quantified nature inequality across all urbanized areas in the US and linked nature access to COVID-19 case rates for ZIP Codes in 17 states. Areas with majority persons of color had both higher case rates and less greenness. Furthermore, when controlling for socio-demographic variables, an increase of 0.1 in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was associated with a 4.1% decrease in COVID-19 incidence rates (95% confidence interval: 0.9-6.8%). Across the US, block groups with lower-income and majority persons of color are less green and have fewer parks. Thus, communities most impacted by COVID-19 also have the least nature nearby. Given urban nature is associated with both human health and biodiversity, these results have far-reaching implications both during and beyond the pandemic. 

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2. Urban Park Usage During the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1142/S2345737621500081  

   Alizadehtazi, Bita ; Tangtrakul, Korin ; Woerdeman, Sloane ; Gussenhoven, Anna ; Mostafavi, Nariman ; Montalto, Franco A. ( December 2020 , Journal of Extreme Events)

   null (Ed.)

   Urban parks and green spaces provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including social interaction and stress reduction. When COVID-19 closed schools and businesses and restricted social gatherings, parks became one of the few places that urban residents were permitted to visit outside their homes. With a focus on Philadelphia, PA and New York City, NY, this paper presents a snapshot of the park usage during the early phases of the pandemic. Forty-three Civic Scientists were employed by the research team to observe usage in 22 different parks selected to represent low and high social vulnerability, and low, medium, and high population density. Despite speculation that parks could contribute to the spread of COVID-19, no strong correlation was found between the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in adjacent zip codes and the number of park users. High social vulnerability neighborhoods were associated with a significantly higher number of COVID-19 cases ([Formula: see text]). In addition, no significant difference in the number of park users was detected between parks in high and low vulnerability neighborhoods. The number of park users did significantly increase with population density in both cities ([Formula: see text]), though usage varied greatly by park. Males were more frequently observed than females in parks in both high vulnerability and high-density neighborhoods. Although high vulnerability neighborhoods reported higher COVID-19 cases, residents of Philadelphia and New York City appear to have been undeterred from visiting parks during this phase of the pandemic. This snapshot study provides no evidence to support closing parks during the pandemic. To the contrary, people continued to visit parks throughout the study, underscoring their evident value as respite for urban residents during the early phases of the pandemic. 

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3. Strategies and inequities in balancing recreation and COVID exposure when visiting green spaces

   https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083221114645  

   Dass, Sarina ; O’Brien, Daniel_T ; Ristea, Alina ( July 2022 , Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science)

   Green spaces are beneficial for physical and mental health, especially during and after disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, created a trade-off: parks could be therapeutic but also could expose people to infection. This paradox posed inequities as marginalized populations often have less access to parks and were hit harder by the pandemic. We combined cellphone-generated mobility data with demographic indicators, a neighborhood survey, and local infection rates to examine how residents of Boston, MA, navigated this trade-off in April–August 2020. We hypothesized that they adopted strategies for mitigating infection exposure—including fewer park visits and prioritizing parks that might have lower infection risk, including larger parks with more opportunity for social distancing and parks near home with fewer unfamiliar faces—but that marginalized populations would have less opportunity to do so. We also introduce a novel measure of exposure per visit based on the volume of other visitors, infection rates, and park size. Bostonians made fewer park visits relative to 2019 and prioritized larger parks and parks closer to home. These strategies varied by community. Experiences of the pandemic were influential, as communities that perceived greater risk or had more infections made more park visits, likely because they were a relatively safe activity. Communities with more infections tended to avoid nearby parks. Inequities were also apparent. Communities with more Black residents and infections had greater infection exposure per visit even when controlling for the types of parks visited, highlighting difficulties in escaping the challenges of the pandemic.

    

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4. Recreational mobility prior and during the COVID-19 pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-024-01535-7  

   Ghadiri, Zahra ; Mashhadi, Afra ; Timme, Marc ; Ghanbarnejad, Fakhteh ( December 2024 , Communications Physics)

   The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession negatively affected many people’s physical, social, and psychological health and has been shown to change population-level mobility, but little attention has been given to park visitations as an indicator. Estimating the frequency of park visitations from aggregated mobility data of all the parks in Washington State (USA), we study trends in park use one year prior to and two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that the gravity model is a robust model for the park visitation behavior in different spatial resolutions of city level and state level and different socio-economical classes. Incorporating network structure, our detailed analysis highlights that high-income level residents changed their recreational behavior by visiting their local parks more and a broader recreational options outside of their local census area; whereas the low-income residents changed their visitation behavior by reducing their recreational choices.

    

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5. What makes urban parks good for California quail? Evaluating park suitability, species persistence, and the potential for reintroduction into a large urban national park

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14045  

   Iknayan, Kelly J. ; Wheeler, Megan M. ; Safran, Samuel M. ; Young, Jonathan S. ; Spotswood, Erica N. ( October 2021 , Journal of Applied Ecology)

   Preserving and restoring wildlife in urban areas benefits both urban ecosystems and the well‐being of urban residents. While urban wildlife conservation is a rapidly developing field, the majority of conservation research has been performed in wildland areas. Understanding the applicability of wildland science to urban populations and the relative importance of factors limiting species persistence are of critical importance to identifying prescriptive management strategies for restoring wildlife to urban parks.

   We evaluated how habitat fragmentation, habitat quality and mortality threats influence species occupancy and persistence in urban parks. We chose California quailCallipepla californicaas a representative species with potential to respond to urban conservation. We used publicly available eBird data to construct occupancy models of quail in urban parks across their native range, and present an application using focal parks interested in exploring quail reintroduction.

   Urban parks had a 0.23 ± 0.02 probability of quail occupancy, with greater occupancy in larger parks that were less isolated from potential source populations, had higher shrub cover and had lower impervious cover. Less isolated parks had higher colonization rates, while larger parks had lower extinction rates. These results align with findings across urban ecology showing greater biodiversity in larger and more highly connected habitat patches.

   A case study highlighted that interventions to increase effective park size and improve connectivity would be most influential for two highly urban focal parks, while changes to internal land cover would have a relatively small impact. Low joint extinction probability in the parks (0.010 ± 0.013) indicated reintroduced populations could persist for some time.

   Synthesis and applications. We show how eBird data can be harnessed to evaluate the responsiveness of wildlife to urban parks of variable size, connectivity and habitat quality, highlighting what management actions are most needed. Using California quail as an example, we found park size, park isolation and presence of coyotes are all important drivers of whether quail can colonize and persist in parks. Our results suggest reintroducing quail to parks could be successful provided parks are large enough to support quail, and management actions are taken to enhance regional connectivity or periodic assisted colonization is used to supplement local populations.

    

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