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Global patterns of urban tree ecophysiology and climate resilience

Fri, Dec 15

|

San Francisco

Introducing the Urban Tree Ecophysiology Network (UTEN)

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Global patterns of urban tree ecophysiology and climate resilience
Global patterns of urban tree ecophysiology and climate resilience

Time & Location

Dec 15, 2023, 2:40 PM – 2:50 PM

San Francisco, 747 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

About the event

Plants provide critical services to  cities and are essential to human wellbeing in urban centers. However,  these services are threatened by projected increases in the frequency of  major climate events driven by anthropogenic climate change. As we  further our understanding of plant responses to global change, urban  ecosystems are often overlooked, and the conclusions drawn from natural  ecosystem and crops may not adequately represent urban vegetation. Urban  forests are fundamentally different from their natural counterparts  with respect to both their physical properties and dynamic ecosystem  processes. Because each city has a distinct flora, urban ecology is  vulnerable to the error propagation inherent to the broad application of  models derived from a single system. As a result, there is no consensus  on

 (1) the degree to which urban trees are persisting under stress at  present, 

(2) the cost of diminished ecosystem services under future  climates and management practices, 

or (3) the thresholds for damage or  mortality of street trees extending beyond a single city.

To address these gaps, we have established the Urban Tree  Ecophysiology Network (UTEN), a collaborative global platform of  researchers, stakeholders, and municipal governments. UTEN aims to  aggregate information on the feedback between urban trees and their  environment across diverse climate regions. Through coordinated trait  campaigns across 10 target cities we measured physiological traits to  estimate tree function and health. Target cities are distributed across  North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia and are  categorized by climate (warm+wet, warm+dry, and temperate). We surveyed  dry-season leaf water status and functional traits (e.g., leaf turgor  loss point) and tree morphology, size, and age for six common species  per city. These data will be paired with continuously monitored  community transpiration, and growth using IoT technology. The synthesis  of these data will address common questions related to tree health in  the face of a changing climate. As many urban forests are managed and  irrigated, our network also has the potential to realize the capacity of  urban forests to collectively serve as a “global common garden” for  integrative models that can be scaled to accommodate diverse species and  wide abiotic variation.

Plain-language Summary Vegetation in cities increases property values, stores excess  rainwater, provides shade and cooling through evapotranspiration, and  filters particulate pollutants from the air. Because plants in urban  environments are typically managed in conditions to which they are not  adapted, it is difficult to predict their response to changes in  management practices or perform under extreme heat waves and droughts  associated with climate change. With the aim of improving management,  sustainability, and resilience of urban forests, we established a global  Urban Tree Ecophysiology Network (UTEN). UTEN operates as a platform  for data sharing and collaboration between cities around the world.  During the dry season for ten cities, members of UTEN surveyed proxies  for the health and function of trees across and present generalizable  findings. These data will be paired with continuous monitoring of tree  water use and growth. Ultimately these data will tell us whether urban  trees are stressed under current management practices (e.g., irrigation)  and inform strategies to improve management in the future.

Authors Grace P John, University of Florida 

Presenting Author Maria Paula Cuervo, University of Florida 

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1450422

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