Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Investigating Provisioning Services in Urban Agriculture: A Case Study from Community Gardens in Bend, Oregon

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/bn999f70r

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  • With an ever-growing urban population there is a continued interest in urban agriculture as a viable option to improve access to fresh produce and enhance food security in an increasingly urbanized world. As the primary method of urban agriculture in the United States, community gardens also provide a range of site-specific ecosystem services. This thesis adds to a limited body of literature on the direct measurements of provisioning services from community gardens and community garden participation’s connection to food security. The city of Bend in Oregon (OR) was chosen as a study site due to the rapid urbanization the city is experiencing and the access to relatively young and few community garden sites. Through a mixed methods approach consisting of participant surveys, participant interviews, citizen science harvest measurements, and a geospatial analysis, this study investigates crop production as a provisioning service at four community garden sites over the course of the 2022 growing season. Applying a case-study approach, this thesis investigates multiple research questions to provide a baseline of both observed and perceived ecosystem services in the community gardens. The citizen science methodology provides a conservative estimate of crop production at each site which can be measured against future harvests. Participant surveys and interviews establish a demographic profile of each garden site and record the ecosystem service benefits valued by gardeners. The results of the geospatial analysis highlight potential future garden sites within 1 km of socially vulnerable U.S. Census block groups. This study shows that participation in community gardens is not a primary component of a food acquisition strategy, and that the participants greatly value the cultural services from community gardens. This study concludes with focal areas for future research to quantify the suite of ecosystem services offered by garden sites in Bend, OR and to further investigate community garden’s contribution to food security.
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