UI - Removal capacity of NO2 by vegetation (LUISA Platform REF2014)

Removal by urban vegetation was calculated as the product of deposition velocity and NO2 concentration. Air pollutant deposition velocity was assessed following the approach proposed by Pistocchi et al. (2010) that estimates deposition velocity (DV) as a linear function of wind speed at 10 m height (w) and land cover type. NO2 concentration levels were estimated from a concentration map derived from Land Use Regression (LUR) models. Areas covered by vegetation were calculated by combination of detailed maps of urban vegetation and forest, aggregated to 100-meter resolution. For urban vegetation, the green layers of the Global Human Settlement Layer were used (Florczyk et al., 2014, Pesaresi et al, 2013). For forests, the High Resolution Global Forest map developed by Hansen (2014) was used. In overlapping areas, the maximum value of both maps was applied. Final map of vegetation had values between zero (no vegetation) and one (totally covered by vegetation).