The purpose of the study was to review ecosystem service researches and show the trend to guide researchers who want to study ecosystem service. Ecosystem service has been a theoretical base for conservation of nature such as grand mountains, rivers and so on. Moreover, reviewed studies showed economical, social, environmental values of ecosystem service in nature as well as in urban to support ecosystem service theory. By leading metropolitan governments in America, Canada and european and asian countries, the urban tree canopy(UTC)s’ ecosystem services have been evaluated quantitatively and accumluated as urban forestry data. This global trend has an implication that the study of UTC and its ecosystem service can support the provision of urban forestry and green spaces and especially, Korean cities should realize UTCs’ values on ecosystem services and start to apply them institutionally to enhance their urban environment.

Tree canopy is a valuable component consisting of urban ecosystem. The purpose of this study was to classify urban tree canopy (UTC) by using high resolution imagery and object-oriented classification (OOC), which was used to classify the different land cover types. With an urban canopy mapping system based on OOC and Decision Tree Classification (DTC), a site mapping was carried out by merging spectral data of high resolution imagery. This methodological approach showed high classification accuracy to distinguish small patches and continuous UTC boundaries on the high resolution imagery. For shadow removal, decision tree classification with various environmental variables such as brightness channel and band combination could effectively work. Our proposed methodology can be successfully used for the assessment and restoration of fragmented urban ecosystem and offer an opportunity to obtain high classification accuracy for the distinction of UTC components in urban landscape areas.

Through numerical experiment using simplified OSU-ID PBL(Oregon State University One-Dimensional Planetary Boundary Layer) model and field measurement, we studied the impacts of vegetation canopy on heat island that was one of the characteristics of local climate in urban area. It was found that if the fraction of vegetation was extended by 10 percent, the maximum air temperature and the maximum ground temperature can come down about 0.9℃, 2.3℃, respectively. Even though the field measurement was done under a little unstable atmospheric condition, the canopy air temperature was lower in the daytime, and higher at night than the air and ground temperature. This result suggests that the extention of vegetation canopy can bring about more pleasant local climate by causing the oasis, the shade and the blanket effect.