Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 23;7:42854. doi: 10.1038/srep42854.
Previous studies have shown both health and environmental benefits of green spaces, especially in moderating temperature and reducing air pollution. However, the characteristics of green structures have been overlooked in previous investigations. In addition, the mediation effects of green structures on respiratory mortality have not been assessed. This study explores the potential mediation pathways and effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality through temperature, primary and secondary air pollutants separately using partial least squares model with data from Taiwan. The measurable characteristics of green structure include the largest patch percentage, landscape proportion, aggregation, patch distance, and fragmentation. The results showed that mortality of pneumonia and chronic lower respiratory diseases could be reduced by minimizing fragmentation and increasing the largest patch percentage of green structure, and the mediation effects are mostly through reducing air pollutants rather than temperature. Moreover, a high proportion of but fragmented green spaces would increase secondary air pollutants and enhance health risks; demonstrating the deficiency of traditional greening policy with primary focus on coverage ratio. This is the first research focusing on mediation effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality, revealing that appropriate green structure planning can be a useful complementary strategy in environmental health management.
先前的研究表明，绿色空间对健康和环境都有好处，特别是在调节温度和减少空气污染方面。然而，先前的调查忽略了绿色结构的特征。此外，绿色结构对呼吸死亡率的中介效应尚未得到评估。本研究使用来自台湾的数据，通过偏最小二乘模型，分别探讨了绿色结构特征通过温度、一次和二次空气污染物对呼吸死亡率的潜在中介途径和影响。绿色结构的可测量特征包括最大斑块百分比、景观比例、聚集度、斑块距离和破碎度。结果表明，通过最小化破碎度和增加绿色结构的最大斑块百分比，可以降低肺炎和慢性下呼吸道疾病的死亡率，并且中介效应主要是通过减少空气污染物而不是温度来实现的。此外，高比例但破碎的绿色空间会增加二次空气污染物并增加健康风险；这表明传统绿化政策主要关注覆盖率的做法存在缺陷。这是第一项关注绿色结构特征对呼吸死亡率的中介效应的研究，表明适当的绿色结构规划可以成为环境健康管理的有用补充策略。
