Addenda to the Special Issue: The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities

In these addenda to our first special issue, The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities, we present five new case studies documenting approaches to conserving, managing, and building an equitable workforce for Forested Natural Areas in cities across the U.S. These case studies were presented at the third annual gathering of the Forests in Cities network which took place in Seattle, Washington in November, 2022

The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities: Introduction to the Special Issue

The following special issue includes a practitioner note that provides context about Forested Natural Areas in cities and introduces eight themes that are explored in the 25 practitioner case studies. This publication is the product of a fruitful workshop that brought together leaders in the field of Forested Natural Areas management. The case studies document both widespread approaches that are being used in cities across the U.S., as well as innovation that is taking place in individual cities. The goals of both the workshop and this publication are to raise national awareness of urban forested natural areas, improve their management, and contribute to a community of practice

Realizing the Potential of Urban Forests: Forests in Cities Workshop Themes and City Case Study Descriptions

Like all forests, forests in cities require resources, science, management, protection, and programming in order to achieve desired conditions. Yet, achieving the desired condition in an urban environment may require new approaches that account for the dynamic and complex nature of the urban setting. These decisions and actions are occurring at the city, park, or site scale. Unlike national parks, or wilderness areas that have a national or state budget, staffing structures, and regulations; forests in cities are regulated and managed primarily at the local municipal scale. This also makes the approaches to forest management planning and policy regulations tailored to individual city governance structures, despite many similar challenges arising at the national level. As part of our Forest in Cities Workshop, we partnered with 12 cities across the United States to create case studies around common themes related to achieving healthy forests as a part of sustainable and healthy cities. Our goal was to provide examples of work on the ground but also provide a lens upon which the work of individual cities could be contextualized as part of common themes and solutions that could be applied broadly. Below we describe the themes of the workshop and the case studies developed by the cities that are included in this special issue

Defining and assessing urban forests to inform management and policy

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