Climate Change, Cities, and Urban Forests.
By: Haya S
Tags: Biodiversity, Cities, Sustainable Development, Urbanism, Climate Change

Climate Change, Cities, and Urban Forests.

Climate change on the political level is a major driver of environmental change, the World Economic Forum has listed it in 2013 among the top five risks for the next ten years, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proclaims on its Fifth Assessment Report that global climate change effect on human life is certain.

hiking by golden gate bridge by Verne Ho

Climate change is a global political concern, yet it is principally at a local level where action is needed; cities have a significant role in dealing with this crisis, they are both drivers of climate change and areas of impact (Wolfslehner- 2015, urban areas are most likely to be vulnerable to climate change due to urban heat island effects and extreme storms caused by the high concentration of built structures (Swanstona, 2016).

Planting urban trees and expanding lands of urban forests are reasoned to be approaches for reducing climate change impacts in urban areas and methods to adjust to its effect (Swanstona, 2016). Adaptation responses in urban forest systems are mainly focused on reducing the system’s climate vulnerability and increasing its climate adaptive capacity (Wolfslehner- 2015). Urban forests can play a major role in climate change with a significant mitigation impacts, they can act as a carbon sink intercepting particles and gaseous pollutants, as well as cooling the air, reducing wind speeds and shading, and reducing stormwater runoff from one side (Wolfslehner, 2015). From another side, implementing urban forests in cities allows a deeper contact with nature when increasing access to public use which contributes to the environmental and ecological development of various urban settings (Natário- 2017).

Urban forests are composed of trees growing in parks, natural areas, along streets and in gardens within a matrix of buildings, roads and waterways, all of which exist primarily due to the actions of humans (Kendal and McDonnell, 2015). Foresters and ecologists developed the core science of forest ecology following the increasing world demand for wood products in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. they focused on natural forests or plantations, extracting wood products and preserving forests. In parallel, opposite to ecologists who were uninterested in trees and forests in built environments, landscapers, landscape architects and park and land managers developed a human focused science of urban forestry, practitioners and scientists working in urban environments engaged in growing, planting, managing and conserving trees in cities and towns primarily for the amenity they provided to humans (Kendal and McDonnell, 2015)

Adapting urban forests to climate change

Cities worldwide, given the fact of the potential changes in climate results on social and economic fabric, are developing strategies to reduce GHG emissions and to adapt to a warmer future especially that urban sites are generally subject to more extreme heat, temperature fluctuations, and flooding (Wolfslehner, 2015).

Urban trees and forests that are already under stress from the intense urban environment are likely to experience added and interactive stress from the effects of global climate change but on the other hand they are mostly considered an important component in helping cities adapt to climate change since an urban tree can provide many benefits to both humans and nature but at the same time (Wolfslehner, 2015). To humans an urban tree, forests and green spaces have gained importance in the modern days as they have been revealed to be recreational spaces to accommodate contemporary needs and demands of citizens. On the other hand, from an environmental aspect, trees in urban areas provide ecosystem services such as reducing the urban heat island effect, storing carbon, reducing pollution, mitigating stormwater runoff, and providing critical habitat for resident and migratory birds (Lewis, Fahey, Scott , Darling, and Swanstona, 2016)

What are urban forests typologies, and urban intervention models?

This will be discussed in the upcoming articles…