Urban Woodlands

Remnant and regenerating forest patches are hotspots of biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban regions. Social uses and benefits, a mosaic of surrounding land uses, introduced and invasive species, and urban climate warming combine to create novel ecological conditions and management challenges in these urban woodlands. An array of public, private, and non-profit organizations engage in management and stewardship of urban forest patches. These efforts vary in emphasis according to organizational mandates and available resources, and fine-scale heterogeneity of land ownership in cities often limits the scope of interventions. This Pursuit has brought together experts in urban ecology, social science, forest ecology, and remote sensing with managers of urban woodlands from Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. Together, we are developing research methodologies to integrate: 1) high-resolution, long-term biophysical data from urban, suburban, and rural forest patches with 2) patterns of ownership, civic stewardship, and public land management, and with 3) remotely sensed indicators of ecosystem conditions and functions. The team has developed a synthesis of these data and a conceptual model of the roles of public land management and civic stewardship in urban woodlands as social-ecological systems (Johnson et al. 2022). Continued work includes expanding the database with additional contributions, examining the role of ordinances in forest condition, and examining spatial patterns of forest patches in relation to urbanization and other land uses. The team is communicating findings of the synthesis to academic and practitioner audiences, to support coordination across jurisdictional boundaries and facilitate the flow of information relevant to decision-making.