How do urban forests work?

Urban Forests and Urban Forestry Urban forests are all trees, forests and associated vegetation and ecosystem components that grow in or very close to the cities, towns and communities where people live, work and play. These “dense settlements”, which include large urban areas and their suburbs, but also cities, etc. Urban forestry embraces best management practices to reap the full benefits of trees in urban environments. It is multidisciplinary and multifaceted and involves activities aimed at research, policy, practice and community participation.

Many of the world's major cities have implemented tree-planting programs based on the supposed environmental and social benefits of urban forests. Recent studies have increasingly proven these assumptions and provide empirical evidence of the contributions of tree-planting programs, as well as their feasibility and limits, to solving or mitigating urban environmental and social problems. We propose that current evidence supports local cooling, stormwater uptake, and the health benefits of urban trees for local residents. However, the potential of urban trees to appreciably mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution across a wide range of sites and environmental conditions is limited.

Consequently, urban trees appear to hold more promise for climate and pollution adaptation strategies than mitigation strategies. In large part, this is due to space constraints that limit the extent of urban treetops relative to the current magnitude of emissions. The most promising environmental and health impacts of urban trees are those that can be achieved with well-managed tree planting and localised site design interventions on a municipal scale. Planting trees at these scales has documented local climate and health benefits, which can be maximized through site-specific design followed by long-term monitoring, adaptive management and studies of eco-evolutionary dynamics.

Urban forestry is the care and management of individual trees and tree populations in urban environments with the purpose of improving the urban environment. Urban forestry involves both planning and management, including the scheduling of urban forest care and maintenance operations. Urban forestry advocates for the role of trees as a fundamental part of urban infrastructure.

urban foresters plant and maintain

trees, support proper tree and forest conservation, conduct research, and promote the many benefits that trees provide.

Urban forestry is practiced by municipal and commercial arborists, municipal and utility foresters, environmental legislators, city planners, consultants, educators, researchers and community activists. Trees provide jobs and create business opportunities. Trees Generate High Return on Investment Statewide, the value that trees provide through environmental benefits, such as energy savings, reduced air pollution and reduced runoff, has been quantified by research conducted by the USDA. Urban forests are a critical form of infrastructure in our cities and towns.

They help filter air and water, maintain biodiversity, foster social cohesion within our communities and much more. The importance of forests and trees in our cities is increasingly recognized, as many cities face exacerbated impacts of climate change. For example, high levels of impermeable surface in urban areas make cities especially vulnerable to flooding after extreme weather events. The increase in the impermeable area also causes cities to have high temperatures, also known as the urban heat island effect.

Trees and forests within the urban matrix can help keep cities cooler and absorb stormwater, increasing our resilience to the impacts of change. At the same time, as these trees grow, they store and sequester carbon, an important greenhouse gas. To learn more about the many benefits that urban forests provide, visit the Vibrant Cities Laboratory. Recognizing this hierarchical link between healthy urban forests and the effectiveness of broader ecosystem protection objectives (e).

Skills within urban forestry can consist of community-based tree management, restoration of neglected spaces, monitoring and maintaining the urban canopy, and building social cohesion in neighborhoods. For more information on resources and information specific to urban forest management at an urban scale, visit this page. The MillionTrees NYC Initiative uses the model of experiments designed to engage environmentalists and designers in creating a long-term, large-scale urban green infrastructure research program. Each community forest was established as a partnership between local authorities and local, regional and national partners, including the Forest Commission and Natural England.

Impact of tree location and arrangement on outdoor microclimates and human thermal comfort in an urban residential environment. Diseased trees provide a decline in ecosystem services, so it is important that urban forestry be part of urban canopy planning and management. Temporal dynamics, including tree demographics, host-pathogen interactions, extinctions, and other population and evolutionary processes, also influence the extent to which tree-planting efforts influence urban conditions. The New England region created urban forestry policies that laid the foundation for urban areas everywhere.

Within the profession and practice of urban forestry, training and credentials are often a prerequisite for proper and efficient management. Australia's understanding of urban forestry evolved during the second time period to include all spaces used by the urban population. Scale-dependent interactions between treetop cover and impervious surfaces reduce urban heat during the day during. While not all cities can implement an urban forest plan, it is possible to implement plans for specific areas, such as parks, that would help increase a municipality's canopy cover.

As cities are heavily affected by climate change, urban forestry professionals must adopt strategies that reduce the impact of climate change on cities. . .