FORUM: Challenges and future directions in urban afforestation
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review urban forestry research that deals specifically with the growth, survival and recruitment of new native urban forests and use these data to identify knowledge gaps and propose research needed to create and maintain native urban forest.
read more
Abstract: Summary 1. Mature urban trees improve air quality, reduce storm water run-off and sequester carbon. Municipal agencies establish forests of native juvenile trees to enhance these and other ecosystem services to cities. Little data exist, however, regarding whether these trees will form mature, native forests. 2. We review urban forestry research that deals specifically with the growth, survival and recruitment of new native urban forests and use these data to identify knowledge gaps and propose research needed to create and maintain native urban forests. 3. Experimental urban forestry studies are few and most are of durations ≤5 years, shorter than the 10–25 year time frame required to understand forest stand dynamics. Studies capturing initial dynamics of urban afforestation (≤5 years) identify invasive species as the primary threat to native tree establishment. Data exploring longer-term dynamics are needed to evaluate whether early-stage afforestation dynamics can be used to infer the composition and function of mature urban forests. 4. Synthesis and applications. Urban afforestation approaches–from natural colonization to large-scale plantings–represent a trade-off in cost vs. efficacy for establishing native forests. A major cost-saving strategy would be to determine whether exotics and natives can co-exist and provide the intended ecosystem services.
read more
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
Find similar papers on Google Scholar, PubMed and Arxiv
Write a critical review of this paper
Analyze citations of this paper to find unaddressed research gaps
Citations
Stormwater management and ecosystem services: a review.
Liana Prudencio,Sarah E. Null +1 more
Abstract: Researchers and water managers have turned to green stormwater infrastructure, such as bioswales, retention basins, wetlands, rain gardens, and urban green spaces to reduce flooding, augment surface water supplies, recharge groundwater, and improve water quality. It is increasingly clear that green stormwater infrastructure not only controls stormwater volume and timing, but also promotes ecosystem services, which are the benefits that ecosystems provide to humans. Yet there has been little synthesis focused on understanding how green stormwater management affects ecosystem services. The objectives of this paper are to review and synthesize published literature on ecosystem services and green stormwater infrastructure and identify gaps in research and understanding, establishing a foundation for research at the intersection of ecosystems services and green stormwater management. We reviewed 170 publications on stormwater management and ecosystem services, and summarized the state-of-the-science categorized by the four types of ecosystem services. Major findings show that: (1) most research was conducted at the parcel-scale and should expand to larger scales to more closely understand green stormwater infrastructure impacts, (2) nearly a third of papers developed frameworks for implementing green stormwater infrastructure and highlighted barriers, (3) papers discussed ecosystem services, but less than 40% quantified ecosystem services, (4) no geographic trends emerged, indicating interest in applying green stormwater infrastructure across different contexts, (5) studies increasingly integrate engineering, physical science, and social science approaches for holistic understanding, and (6) standardizing green stormwater infrastructure terminology would provide a more cohesive field of study than the diverse and often redundant terminology currently in use. We recommend that future research provide metrics and quantify ecosystem services, integrate disciplines to measure ecosystem services from green stormwater infrastructure, and better incorporate stormwater management into environmental policy. Our conclusions outline promising future research directions at the intersection of stormwater management and ecosystem services.
163
Growing a diverse urban forest: Species selection decisions by practitioners planting and supplying trees
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored tree species selection criteria used by practitioners involved in urban tree planting and supply to better understand current planting activities and highlight the need for conversations about ways different actors can select species to contribute to a diverse and healthy urban forest.
158
The Benefits and Limits of Urban Tree Planting for Environmental and Human Health
Diane E. Pataki,Marina Alberti,Mary L. Cadenasso,Alexander J. Felson,Mark J. McDonnell,Stephanie Pincetl,Richard V. Pouyat,Heikki Setälä,Thomas H. Whitlow +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose that current evidence supports local cooling, stormwater absorption, and health benefits of urban trees for local residents, which can be realized with well-stewarded tree planting and localized design interventions at site to municipal scales.
Urbanization effects on vegetation cover in major African cities during 2001-2017
TL;DR: MODIS land cover and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) data were used to examine urbanization effects on VC in 59 large cities in Africa during 2001–2017 and found negative annual ΔEVI was observed in 56 of 59 cities.
109
References
The maintenance of species-richness in plant communities: the importance of the regeneration niche
TL;DR: It is shown that when an individual dies, it may or may not be replaced by an individual of the same species, which is all‐important to the argument presented.
4.4K
Urbanization as a major cause of biotic homogenization
TL;DR: In this paper, a basic conservation challenge is that urban biota is often quite diverse and very abundant, and that, because so many urban species are immigrants adapting to city habitats, urbanites of all income levels become increasingly disconnected from local indigenous species and their natural ecosystems.
3.5K
Novel ecosystems: theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological world order
Richard J. Hobbs,Salvatore Arico,James Aronson,Jill S. Baron,Peter Bridgewater,Viki A. Cramer,Paul R. Epstein,John J. Ewel,Carlos A. Klink,Ariel E. Lugo,David A. Norton,Dennis S. Ojima,David M. Richardson,Eric W. Sanderson,Fernando Valladares,Montserrat Vilà,Regino Zamora,Martin Zobel +17 more
TL;DR: The issues relevant to those types of ecosystems containing new combinations of species that arise through human action, environmental change, and the impacts of the deliberate and inadvertent introduction of species from other regions are explored.
Novel ecosystems: implications for conservation and restoration
TL;DR: It is suggested that these novel systems will require significant revision of conservation and restoration norms and practices away from the traditional place-based focus on existing or historical assemblages.
On the relationship between niche and distribution
TL;DR: Hutchinson’s niche concept can be modified to incorporate the influences of niche width, habitat availability and dispersal, as well as interspecific competition per se, and a simulation model called NICHE is introduced that embodies many of Hutchinson's original niche concepts and is used to predict patterns of species distribution.
1.6K