Urban Green Infrastructure Under Land‑Use Change: Biomonitoring Air Pollution, Trace Metals, and Soil Carbon Sequestration

Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) plays a pivotal role not only in mitigating rising urban environmental threats, but also improves aesthetics while enhancing the health and quality of urban life. However, rapid land-use land-cover (LULC) changes reduce the effectiveness of UGI. Modern ecology and urban planning specifies the importance of UGI in town-planning, climate control, and health benefits. This study focuses on bio-monitoring roles of plants, air pollution and its mitigation measures through UGI, trace metals-UGI relationship, and soil carbon sequestration in UGI under LULC. The outcome of this research will help in understanding the relevance of UGI in the context of urbanization and LULC changes, alteration in ecosystem services, depleting air quality, degrading soil health, and climate regulation. The work will also address the issues relating to the passive defense against particulate matter, gaseous pollutants, and trace metals while assessing the benefits of long-term soil carbon sequestration and identifying strategies for urban development and planning involving the UGIs.This Research Topic explores how land‑use and land‑cover change reshapes coupled air–plant–soil systems in rapidly urbanizing and industrializing regions, with a focus on practical, measurable pathways for pollution mitigation and climate co‑benefits. We welcome contributions that (i) develop and validate plant‑based biomonitoring frameworks (e.g., tolerance/performance indices) to guide species selection for urban greening; (ii) quantify particulate capture and trace‑metal accumulation in vegetation across gradients of altitude, traffic, and mining influence; (iii) estimate trace‑metal concentration in soil, uptake by plants and impact of trace-metals on plant physiological and biochemical synthesis; (iv) quantify the carbon sequestration potential of tress for green belts and urban biotopes including the metrics for facilitating the carbon credits; and (v) resolve how land‑use transitions alter soil carbon storage, lability, and enzymatic activity, including links between organic carbon and metal partitioning in soils and sediments. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary work that connects field observations with exposure/risk metrics and management outcomes (urban planning, green belts, phytoremediation, and nature‑based solutions), as well as regional syntheses and methods that support scalable monitoring and decision‑making for healthier, lower‑carbon cities and landscapes.The scope of the research encompasses the following but is not limited to: • Green solutions to rising urban pollution• green infrastructure• role of green belts and urban biotopes against air pollution• land use land cover changes and soil carbon storage• heavy metal cycling in relation to soil-plant-air dynamics• models on urban greenery and carbon sequestration• particulate matter-plant relationship• importance of greenery in urban planning• rooftop plantation and air pollution Topic editors: Chandan Sahu, Daoud Ali, Dr. Binaya Kumar Pattnaik Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79439/urban-green-infrastructure-under-land-use-change-biomonitoring-air-pollution-trace-metals-and-soil-carbon-sequestration