The capacity of urban areas to deliver provisioning ecosystem services is commonly overlooked and underutilized. Urban populations have globally increased fivefold since 1950, and they disproportionately consume ecosystem services and contribute to carbon emissions, highlighting the need to increase urban sustainability and reduce environmental impacts of urban dwellers. Here, we investigated t...

Trees are cultivated in public and private landscapes in and around cities and towns. They are grown for the tremendous contributions they make both to the environment and the quality of people’s lives. In this urban forest, trees must be removed when they die or for reasons of health, safety, or necessary changes in the landscape. The wood from these felled landscape trees could potentially be...

Why do we plant trees into our landscapes? The answer is easy. We plant them because they filter dust and absorb pollution, provide shade, shelter, deflect and soften noise, reduce wind velocity and glare. The aesthetic of tree lined streets and green spaces have been shown to have positive psychological and health benefits to human society including lower rates of mental illness, violence and ...

While CO2 emissions of cities are widely discussed, carbon storage in urban vegetation has been rarely empirically analyzed. Remotely sensed data offer considerable benefits for addressing this lack of information. The aim of this paper is to develop and apply an approach that combines airborne LiDAR and QuickBird to assess the carbon stored in urban trees of Berlin, Germany, and to identify di...

Urban streetscapes are outdoor areas in which the general public can appreciate green landscapes and engage in outdoor activities along the street. This study tested the extent to which the degree of awareness of urban street trees impacts attention restoration and perceived restorativeness. We manipulated the degree of awareness of street trees. Participants were placed into four groups and sh...

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, close to 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in metropolitan areas, and Mississippi’s population is 49 percent urban, one of the smallest urban populations in the country. As urban populations and urban areas expand, the urban forest increases, too, and the U.S. urban area is expected to increase more than 8 percent by 2050,1 or an addition roughly the siz...

BACKGROUND The functional convergence of tree transpiration has rarely been tested for tree species growing under urban conditions even though it is of significance to elucidate the relationship between functional convergence and species differences of urban trees for establishing sustainable urban forests in the context of forest water relations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We measured sa...

Recent decades have witnessed the growing use of non-native plants in Iran while their use is very challenging and high-cost for the country. This raised a new approach in recent decades towards the use of native plants. Native species are precious because they possess the main ecological factors and they are already compatible with the region. Accordingly, this research was conducted to evalua...

While urban areas are often considered to be comprised chiefly of artificial surfaces, they can contain a substantial portion of green space and a great diversity of natural habitats. These spaces include public parks, private gardens and street trees, all of which can provide valuable environmental services, such as improved air quality. Trees play a particular role in cities as they are often...