High Biodiversity of Green Infrastructure Does Not Contribute to Recreational Ecosystem Services

Urban lakes, especially those of natural origin, provide ecosystem services, recreation being one of the most important and highly valued by the city dwellers. Fulfilling the need of city residents to relax and have contact with nature has become a priority in urbanized areas and has been proved to positively affect people’s health and well-being. The recreational potential of water bodies was identified to be most important aspect of ecosystem services to the residents of the neighboring areas. Assessment of recreational ecosystem services (RES) provisioning to society based on the real time spent by the citizens, in the rural-urban gradient allowed us to show how the economic benefits of lakes differ in urbanized, suburban and rural landscapes. Growth of cities has led to increased population density in the surroundings of ecologically valuable areas, resulting in higher pressure from visitors seeking recreational values. Along with urbanization, the impoverishment of ecosystem functions takes place limiting their capability to provide ecosystem services. In this work provisioning of recreational ecosystem services of 28 floodplain lakes located in urban-rural gradient of Warsaw agglomeration was assessed. The relation between the ecological value of the water bodies, measured using naturalness indices, and the ecosystem services they can provide was assessed. The results showed that the floodplain lakes located along the urban-rural gradient are of a great importance to the citizens due to their recreational potential. However the provisioning of recreational ecosystem services is poorly connected with the ecological value of the floodplain lakes and the economic benefits are of a greatest importance in objects included in the urban green spaces.