Aplication of the City Biodiversity Index to the city of Horta, Azores

Abstract

Recognizing the ecosystemic services as essential for sustainable living within urban areas has shown the importance of preserving the city’s biodiversity.

To preserve on needs to know, and, for that reason, it has become necessary to apply one normalized methodology, which can be applied to every urban area on the planet, allowing us to evaluate and manage its biodiversity status.

This work reports the first application of the City Biodiversity Index (CBI) to the city of Horta, located on Faial Island, for the year 2019. This study determined, for the city of Horta, a relatively high index, with 70 points, in 92 possible points. In it, we determined the sectors in which it is possible to improve the biological diversity of the city of Horta. We also point out some limitations to the application of the CBI’s methodology to a small island city.