## 3 Results and Discussion
### Results and Discussion of Method Application
#### 3.1.4 The Urban-Rural Gradient  
The urban-rural gradient shows how much the composition of habitats differs (see Figure 6) and how the values of EFs change depending on the distance (a) from the center in the case of a city with typical urban core, or (b) from the river in the case of a city with development situated around the river (see Figure 7).  
In the case of Liberec, it is noticeable that the values of EFs increase relatively gradually with increasing distance from the center. Only evapotranspiration increases sharply at a distance of 5 km, before decreasing and starting to increase again; this may be due to the relatively large area of alluvial and deciduous forests, as well as wet meadows in this area. The prevailing gradual pattern of EFs increase is also supported by geomorphological conditions. Liberec lies in a valley whose slopes gradually rise to the foot of the Jizera Mountains in the northeast and the Jested Mountain in the southwest; the city grows on all sides relatively evenly. In Liberec, the center with very low values of all EFs spreads across a  
Figure 5: Map visualization of (**A**–**F**) indicating the comparison of the performance of EFs in relative values parameterized on a scale of 0–1 and divided into five categories (1 for the worst value, 5 for the best value; the legend is the same as for maps (**G**,**H**)). Maps (**G**,**H**) merge the three assessed EFs values into a single aggregated performance of EFs value.  
diameter of about 5-6 km; in Decin, this area with low EFs extends cross a diameter of only 2-3 km, corresponding to the different size of urbanized area. In Decin, the gradient is very uneven, as values increase at much shorter distances from the center but decrease again when reaching 5 km from the center (in the case of HVM value and carbon production) or 8 km in the case of evapotranspiration caused by river Elbe influence and high share of deciduous forests. This situation is supported by a particular geomorphology. At a certain distance from the urban core (and from the river), there are steep slopes carved by the river in the sandstone rock, which are not suitable for urban or agricultural use and are, therefore, mainly covered by natural and near-natural habitats. The plateau that continues above these slopes is dominated by planted spruce forests; thus, the biodiversity value decreases at greater distances. A similar trend in urban-rural gradient was described by [PERSON] (2017) for EFs/ESs in Barcelona, where it was found that areas closer to the city had higher values than the surrounding agricultural landscape. From Figure 2, it is apparent that, especially in the case of Decin, the peri-urban area is covered by diverse habitats with relatively high proportion of natural and near-natural habitats.  
Figure 6: Representation of habitats in individual intervals representing distance to **(A)** city center (upper part) and **(B)** dominant river of the city (lower part). For the sake of clarity of the graph, habitats are grouped into categories based on land use, but the division into natural (N) and degraded (D) habitats is retained.  
The highly urbanized area is, especially in Decin, concentrated around a large watercourse and creates a narrow strip of development in the valley along the river. To visualize the specific gradient, a buffer around the river was created, revealing that, instead of forming blue and green infrastructure of high habitat quality, areas around watercourses are of the lowest value concerning studied EFs. A suitable strategy would be the development of blue and green corridors for pedestrian and animal movement, biodiversity, and ecosystem service support [75].