Forest and the city: A multivariate analysis of peri-urban forest land cover patterns in 283 European metropolitan areas

Salvati, Luca; Ranalli, Flavia; Carlucci, Margherita; Ippolito, Achille; Ferrara, Agostino; Corona, Piermaria

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.09.025

Cited by 40 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Natural regions [19,20]. Natural remnants in cities provide habitats for species of conservation concern [21][22][23][24], but have often been lost, transformed or fragmented due to urban development [5,10,25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerging Urban Forests: Opportunities for Promoting the Wild Side of the Urban Green Infrastructure

et al. 2019

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Many cities aim to increase urban forest cover to benefit residents through the provision of ecosystem services and to promote biodiversity. As a complement to traditional forest plantings, we address opportunities associated with “emerging urban forests” (i.e., spontaneously developing forests in cities) for urban biodiversity conservation. We quantified the area of successional forests and analyzed the species richness of native and alien plants and of invertebrates (carabid beetles, spiders) in emerging forests dominated by alien or native trees, including Robinia pseudoacacia, Acer platanoides, and Betula pendula. Emerging urban forests were revealed as shared habitats of native and alien species. Native species richness was not profoundly affected by the alien (co-)dominance of the canopy. Instead, native and alien plant species richnesses were positively related. Numbers of endangered plants and invertebrates did not differ between native- and alien-dominated forest patches. Patterns of tree regeneration indicate different successional trajectories for novel forest types. We conclude that these forests (i) provide habitats for native and alien species, including some endangered species, (ii) allow city dwellers to experience wild urban nature, and (iii) support arguments for adapting forests to dynamic urban environments. Integrating emerging urban forests into the urban green infrastructure is a promising pathway to sustainable cities and can complement traditional restoration or greening approaches.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerging Urban Forests: Opportunities for Promoting the Wild Side of the Urban Green Infrastructure

et al. 2019

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“…Forested natural areas are primarily sustained though natural regeneration, are influenced by successional dynamics, and on death trees often decompose in place. Forested natural areas can support habitat for native plants and animals that require larger patches (Nielsen et al 2013, Soga et al 2014, Salvati et al 2017, offer human health benefits related to nature-based experiences (Müller et al 2018), and have disproportionately high measures of some ecosystem services compared to other types of urban greenspace (Vieira et al 2018). Separate assessments of street trees and forested natural areas have been developed in local municipalities to inform management (Chacalo et al 1994, Galvin 1999), yet are not commonly put into the context of assessments or policy needs of the entire urban forest (Nowak and Greenfield 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining and assessing urban forests to inform management and policy

Pregitzer

Ashton

Charlop‐Powers

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The context in which trees and forests grow in cities is highly variable and influences the provision of ecological, social, and economic benefits. Understanding the spatial extent, structure, and composition of forests is necessary to guide urban forest policy and management, yet current forest assessment methodologies vary widely in scale, sampling intensity, and focus. Current definitions of the urban forest include all trees growing in the urban environment, and have been translated to the design of urban forest assessments. However, such broad assessments may aggregate types of urban forest that differ significantly in usage and management needs. For example, street trees occur in highly developed environments, and are planted and cared for on an individual basis, whereas forested natural areas often occur in parkland, are managed at the stand level, and are primarily sustained by natural processes such as regeneration. We use multiple datasets for New York City to compare the outcomes from assessments of the entire urban forest, street trees, and forested natural areas. We find that non-stratified assessments of the entire urban forest are biased towards abundant canopy types in cities (e.g. street trees) and underestimate the condition of forested natural areas due to their uneven spatial arrangement. These natural areas account for one quarter of the city's tree canopy, but represent the majority of trees both numerically and in terms of biomass. Non-stratified assessments of urban forest canopy should be modified to accurately represent the true composition of different urban forest types to inform effective policy and management.

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“…X. H. Zhang (2010) mentioned that urban forest is the vitality of urban infrastructure, its ecological benefi ts are irreplaceable and the construction of urban forest is essential to the urban ecological environment construction. Salvati et al (2017) found that using the "spread model" to shape the degree edge landscape can be a good protection of forest resources. In this paper, the plant community species of Nanshan Botanical Garden were analysed by landscape ecology and landscape planning was performed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant landscape planning and design of Nanshan Botanical Garden (China) based on forest ecological garden

Ren

2018

Forestry Studies

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In recent years, with the rapid development of human civilization, a variety of environmental problems have emerged. As the most important natural ecological system of terrestrial ecosystems, forest ecosystem plays a significant role in protecting the environment and beautifying cities. The landscape planning and design of botanical gardens is of great significance to the maintenance of the urban forest ecosystem. Taking the Nanshan botanical garden as the research object, this paper analysed the present situation of the garden and carried out the vegetation landscape planning transformation on it from the perspective of landscape ecology. Then, the landscape hierarchy analysis method was used to evaluate the landscape after the transformation, the results of which suggested that the comprehensive evaluation of the garden was the highest when the plant landscape was diversified and the structure level was reasonable, which provided a reference for the optimization of the urban forest ecosystem.

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Forest and the city: A multivariate analysis of peri-urban forest land cover patterns in 283 European metropolitan areas

Cited by 40 publications

References 44 publications

Emerging Urban Forests: Opportunities for Promoting the Wild Side of the Urban Green Infrastructure

Emerging Urban Forests: Opportunities for Promoting the Wild Side of the Urban Green Infrastructure

Defining and assessing urban forests to inform management and policy

Plant landscape planning and design of Nanshan Botanical Garden (China) based on forest ecological garden

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