Urban Green Space Analysis in University of British Columbia Vancouver Campus

Due to the rapid growth of urbanization, species biodiversity is threatened and the innate relationship between humans and nature begins to fade gradually. Urban green spaces play a vital role in reconnecting human and urbanized landscape with its unique characteristics. Meanwhile, virtual gaming technology with applied geographic information has made a spectacular process to promote interactions between humans and their surroundings. Five types of green space were identified in the University of British Columbia Vancouver campus: lawn, planting bed, planting bed on structure, athletic field, and urban forest. A novel approach of combining Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data, ground-based inventory data, geographic information system (GIS) data, and geocoordinates derived from reality game Pokémon GO was applied to explore geospatial gaming technology’s application in mapping cultural use and biodiversity hotspots at a university campus. LiDAR-derived individual tree crown polygons contributed to estimate canopy cover. Manually delineated tree crown from the study area's orthophoto was used to compare the crown area accuracy with LiDAR technology. The point density heat map illustrated the study area's cultural interests, which were generated by Pokestops' geospatial coordinates. A dataset containing two green space assessments was conducted with various factors: native species ratio, species richness, canopy cover, and cultural interest. Both assessments highlighted the importance of urban forest. This green space type achieved 0.396 in the first assessment and 0.501 for the second assessment of cultural and biodiversity values.