What is urban forestry and why is it important?

Urban forestry is defined as the planting, maintenance, care and protection of tree populations in urban environments. And the role of trees is an essential function of urban planning and urban infrastructure.

urban forests

provide valuable ecosystem services, such as eliminating air pollution, carbon storage, oxygen production and preventing runoff. Species distribution and tree size are important factors that control the present and future supply of these ecosystem services.

Considerable attention is needed in forest establishment selection, protection and management of species to meet current and future demands for ecosystem services. Demand for these ecosystem services is increasing in urban population centers. However, development strategies often encompass natural spaces rather than renovating existing (underutilized) spaces, since new development is less costly than. Urban forests need management and protection strategies to meet the challenge this presents.

The quantification and valuation of ecosystem services are tools that urban forest managers can use to protect mature and high-value trees during development planning. Other benefits of urban forests, such as improved health, emotional well-being and energy savings, should also be included in any assessment of urban forests. Urban environments can contribute to mental fatigue and stress. Including trees in urban areas can create a restorative and peaceful environment that helps people recover from stress and fatigue.

Urban forestry is the management of trees because of their contribution to the physiological, sociological and economic well-being of urban society. Within the field of urban forestry, one of the first to consider the sustainability of urban forests was Clark et al. By suggesting that in order to maintain identity and support the role of rural landscapes, urban populations holding political and economic power should recognize the importance of the countryside as a producer of food and energy, and also as a place of healthy, high-quality lifestyles. After Dangerous Heat Waves in Europe, Paris Commits to Expanding Urban Green Spaces Across the City.

Particularly close to urban areas, wetlands are altered for mosquito control through trenching, tiling, pumping, vegetation management and pesticide spraying (Table (Middleton, 199. It is also an urban ecosystem, a complex human-environmental system, which requires understanding to ensure planning sustainable urban). Unlike extensive forest landscapes, in a city, small groups or even individual trees can provide measurable economic, environmental, social and health benefits for urban populations. In addition, urban forests under study had faster rates of carbon sequestration than other forests, storing nearly three times more carbon per year than protected national forests in the Pacific Northwest. They include urban parks, street trees, landscaped boulevards, gardens, river and coastal walks, greenways, river corridors, wetlands, nature reserves, tree belts, and operating trees at former industrial sites.

Urban trees can also affect stream flows, due to their ability to intercept rain and affect rates of water infiltration into the soil. Quantitative information on these benefits helps land use planners, local governments and decision makers to see the contributions that are often overlooked in urban forests and can help plan where to continue to plant trees within a complex urban environment. Urban trees provide physical, mental, emotional and psychological benefits to urban residents (humans and wildlife) and increase the beauty and aesthetics of their local environment and reduce the crime rate, as well as a myriad of other social problems. Four-fifths of Americans and two-thirds of South Carolinians live in urban areas (approximately 6% of the Earth's surface).

Urban forests help filter air and water, control stormwater, conserve energy, and provide habitat and shade for animals. It emerged as a discipline in North America in response to better ways to deal with the growing importance of urban green spaces dominated by trees, as well as increasing pressures on green areas. . .