Vegetation and residents' survey on urban green spaces in Kuopio

The dataset includes information on vegetation and residents’ surveys. The vegetation survey includes information on the presence, richness and cover of flowering vascular plant species on traffic islands (TIs) and islands in recreational areas (RIs) in Kuopio, Finland (62.89306, 27.67828) during June, July, and August 2024. The vegetation sampling included 25 TIs and 25 Ris which were selected by identifying islands with spontaneous vegetation with relatively even distribution across Kuopio. The standard 1x1 m quadrat placement method was used to assess the estimated coverage of total vegetation (in %), the coverage of flowering vegetation (in %), the total number of vascular plant species, and the number of vascular plant species flowering during the survey. The residents’ survey contains the results of a Webropol (version 3.0) survey conducted in July and August 2024 in Kuopio. In total, 442 residents of Kuopio responded to the survey during the two months. The Webropol survey included questions about the residents’ perceptions and preferences of urban green spaces and two environmental education interventions. There were 23 questions which were a combination of optional open-ended and mandatory close-ended questions, incorporating multiple-choice options, multiple-selection formats, and matrix-style questions. The survey took about 10 minutes to answer. The research was conducted under the responsible conduct of research (RCR) guided by the Finnish National Board for Research Integrity (TENK).