Sniff the urban park: Unveiling odor features and landscape effect on smellscape in Guangzhou, China.

Smellscape, as the sense of smell cross space, has a huge impact on human behavior, attitudes and health. However, so far it has rarely been addressed and measured in both landscape practice and theories. The present case study refined the quantitative smellwalk method to examine the spatial and temporal features of urban park smellscape. The effects of landscape patterns on smellscape were further unraveled combining with remote sensing techniques and field surveys. The results indicated that: (i) human activities and nature odors dominated the urban park odor environments, (ii) the temporal variation of the urban park smellscape was mainly driven by human activities, (iii) the different site types of urban park exerted a significant impact on the composition of the smellscape, and (iv) the landscape pattern characteristics of forest, shrubs, grass, water, buildings and roads had significant effects on different types of odors. This study poses a first systematic exploration of various odors in urban green environments and offers novel insights into the design of smellscape via unveiling spatial-temporal odor distribution patterns. • Explored a wide array of smells in urban parks and proposed a classification scheme of smells. • Unveiled the spatial and temporal patterns of smellscape in an urban park in Guangzhou city, China. • Investigated the effects of the landscape spatial pattern on smellscape, providing novel insights into the planning and management of urban greening. • Refined the smellwalk method to measure and investigate smellscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]