Through their ecosystem services, forests play an important role in protecting water resources, especially in urban environments. This paper presents a methodology for assessing ecosystem services of urban forests for the protection of a reserve water resource, representing the first such non-economic assessment. In order to compare ecosystem services of forests and other land use types, we selected indicators for forests and the other land use types, related to water purification, water flow regulation, and air pollution reduction for the catchment area for the reserve water source. The highest contribution of urban forests has been found for air pollution reduction, where indicators are significantly higher than for agricultural land or meadows. There was also a high contribution of urban forests to water flow regulation, which was similar to the one of wetlands, marshes and floodplains.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13025283
COBISS.SI-ID: 11111111
COBISS.SI-ID: 22222222