In urban areas, the implementation of schoolyard facilities (especially through the greening of these spaces) aims to promote children's contact with nature to improve well-being and increase their awareness of environmental preservation. In this study, we use the prospect of schoolyard landscaping in two French schools to conduct research on pupils’ relationship with nature and well-being at school. We explore cognitive and social mechanisms that affect children's perceptions and behaviour in their relationships with nature on a daily basis and in the school context, with a view toward implementing schoolyard designs. The research aims are (i) to gain a better understanding of the perceptions and uses that shape children's day-to-day interactions, (ii) to document their perceived well-being in the school environment, and (iii) to elicit pupils' views on changes to the school grounds, in order to better understand the characteristics and dynamics underlying the organisation of direct and sensitive relationships with nature. The results of this study are intended to contribute to an understanding of the issues, obstacles and levers involved in implementing schoolyard development projects, and to provide input for a reflective approach to these initiatives. The results show that children's daily experiences of nature are constructed at the convergence of direct contact with the environment and the social framework that supports these interactions. These experiences foster the construction of perceptions and links with the natural environment, which reciprocally feed into further experience. The presence of nature in school grounds directly promotes pupils' perceived well-being; a greater degree of experience and appreciation of nature positively influences it. We observe a lack of explicit recognition of nature's contribution to well-being and examine the social and contextual reasons behind this, as well as the impact on pupils' choices about schoolground planning. We then discuss the limits of urban policies based on schoolyard modifications and explore ways of including social-ecological relationships through children’s participation.
Unlike most major U.S. cities, developed and industrialized decades earlier, Atlanta retains a large portion of its native and originally forested land with a high diversity of species, rare plants, and even old-growth trees. A 2008 baseline canopy analysis found that while the city’s tree canopy cover was among the highest in the country (47.9%), its canopy and high-quality forests were vulnerable to loss and fragmentation since only 4.9% of the canopy was on public land. In 2016, the city authorized the use of its Tree Trust Fund to purchase high-quality forested land for perpetual protection and established criteria for evaluating, prioritizing, and selecting these natural areas for purchase. The first acquisition occurred in 2020, resulting in the protection of Lake Charlotte Nature Preserve, a 216-acre oak-hickory forest, one of the largest remaining mature forests in the city, which was under major threat of industrial development. This case study discusses this innovative funding mechanism and the selection criteria for identifying high-quality urban forests.
This paper describes a civic ecology program called Bees Alive! developed by the NYU Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education & Sustainability over three years to establish a native plant pollinator garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. The project brought together a large university, public schools, non-profit organizations and a community garden called Lentol Garden to support wildlife and create an outdoor classroom to educate the public about the importance of pollinators. The garden was utilized as a context for civic ecology, environmental education and stewardship. Theories of place-based education and experiential learning were incorporated in designing this long-term project funded by EPA Region 2. This article illustrates how partnerships between educators and stewards can enhance green infrastructure, ecosystem services and human well-being in cities (Krasny 2014).
Within Louisville, KY’s network of urban green space and forests, invasive plant management is vital to protecting biodiversity and allowing native species to thrive. Partners across the city have been working to identify non-native invasive species, map their spread, monitor how they affect native species, and mitigate damage from invasive plants. Much of that falls into three categories:
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.
This case study discusses the Urban Resources Initiative’s efforts to remove invasive vines from natural areas in New Haven, CT. The Urban Resources Initiative (URI) is the primary urban forestry organization in New Haven, and community engagement is a key feature of their programming. Working with a combination of local stewardship groups (“Community Greenspace”) and a workforce program (“GreenSkills”) for previously incarcerated individuals and teens, URI began hosting vine removal workdays in New Haven’s parks as a way to both protect critical components of the city’s forest canopy and build interest and investment in the city’s natural areas.
As the planet warms, heat-vulnerable communities in cities face increased heat-related risks including lost productivity, reduced learning outcomes, illness, and death. Despite the growing threat of heat, effective approaches to alleviate urban heat are available. Tree planting has received investment in a growing number of cities around the world, but there are significant gaps in our understanding of the cooling potential of trees in the urban context, particularly the impacts on indoor spaces where urban dwellers spend most of their time. Our study engaged community scientists in Los Angeles County, USA to collect data on the impacts of trees on indoor and outdoor thermal conditions in residential sites. Participants created a thermal sensor network that contributed continuous readings for the study period. We mimicked an experimental research design using a difference-in-differences approach where “treehouses” with more trees and “non-treehouses” with fewer trees were compared on hot days (>90°F or 32°C) and non-hot days. We found that on hot days indoor temperatures in treehouses warm less than in non-treehouses, but that trees provide relatively less benefit at night. We also found that exposure to extreme heat reaches dangerous levels in older residences without trees or air conditioning. underscoring the need for swift action to cool heat-vulnerable communities.
This study assessed the response to irrigation rate and the minimum irrigation rate for optimum growth of seedlings of five tropical tree species used in urban landscaping in Ondo, Nigeria. The study also evaluated the effects of irrigation rate and sawdust biochar on growth attributes and biochemical constituents of the seedlings and the changes in the physical and chemical properties of the soil on which the tree seedlings were grown. Seedlings of five tree species, Bauhinia monandra, Delonix regia, Terminalia catappa, Dypsis lutescens, and Veitchia merrillii, were subjected to six treatments as follows; The first three treatments comprised of seedlings grown in soil without biochar application and subjected to 80%, 60%, and 35% FC irrigation rates while the last three treatments were seedlings grown in the soil-biochar mixture and subjected to 80%, 60%, and 35% FC irrigation rates. Seedlings grown in soil irrigated at 80% FC served as control. Relative to 80% FC treatment, soil bulk density increased, moisture content decreased significantly, and plant available K, Ca, and Mg and percentage N decreased transiently in the soil subjected to 60% and 35% FC irrigation rates. There were no significant differences between the measured growth attributes and malondialdehyde content of the seedlings irrigated at 80% FC and those irrigated at 60% and 35% FC. In addition, seedlings in the 35% and 60% FC treatments deployed non-enzymatic and enzymatic antioxidant machinery to overwhelm the oxidative burst in their chloroplasts. Conclusively, the minimum irrigation rate for optimum growth of the tree seedlings was 35% FC. The practice of a 60% and 35% FC irrigation rate for tree production in the nursery was a viable water-saving strategy, and a 35% FC watering rate was beneficial for enhancing the tolerance of the tested trees. Irrespective of irrigation rate, biochar application improved soil's physical and chemical properties, moisture content, and plant-available macronutrients. Biochar amendment also produced the most vigorous seedlings at an 80% FC irrigation rate, enhanced the measured attributes of seedlings irrigated at 60% FC, alleviated the adverse effects, and strengthened the tolerance of tree seedlings in the 35% FC watering rate.
Urban development and wetland loss have negatively impacted water quality. Natural areas and systems can help mitigate those impacts. With over two centuries of utilizing the Schuylkill River as a source of drinking water, Philadelphia has adapted from land preservation to wetland creation to achieve sediment Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standards. This case study highlights how the innovation of constructed stormwater wetlands coupled with the restoration of forested natural areas provides water quality and ecological benefits.
Urbanization is one of the most transformative drivers of global environmental change today, with India representing one of the fastest urbanizing countries. We map the urban expansion of India’s ten largest cities from 2001 to 2016, through a regression tree classification of Landsat data in Google Earth Engine. Indian cities are growing through sprawl, and simultaneously densifying through in-filling. In Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, urban growth is multinucleated, aggregating to form a larger urban region. However, the dominant pattern in most cities is mono-nucleated growth via edge-expansion. The colonial signature is visible in many cities such as Bangalore, where due to the British colonial practice of planting trees in the cantonment, the city interior has lower urban density at the core as compared to the periphery. Much of the urban growth between 2001-2016 is at the expense of agriculture and fallow areas. Across all cities, urban patches have expanded and coalesced into larger units. At the same time, there is an overall loss of surface water cover within cities. Urban growth has led to fragmentation of tree cover, agriculture/fallow and water bodies. This paper demonstrates that India’s urbanization is leading to severe impacts on water security (because of the loss of surface water), biodiversity (because of the fragmentation of tree cover and the conversion of agriculture and fallow lands to built up urban cover), factors which if left unaddressed will severely impact the sustainability of Indian urbanization.
Yogyakarta City and its peri urban areas have experienced a rapid land cover change in the last two decades from non-urban to urban areas. Understanding the driving factors and their level of influence will facilitate well-informed decisions in planning sustainable urbanization. This study formulated a hypothesis that the area hosting a university is most likely to have higher urban area and urbanization rate and verified it by using a land change model (LCM). The LCM which implemented a multi-layer perceptron algorithm using LANDSAT 5 TM in 1999 and 2005 successfully produced a robust land change model with accuracy rate of 81.24% and model’s skill measure 0.6248, and predicted the urban area in 2030, 2040, and 2050. The urban area between LCM and Statistics Indonesia showed strong positive correlation with R2 values of 0.73 and 0.83 in 2005 and 2010 to validate the model. The model showed that urbanization in Yogyakarta city was prominently triggered by the density of universities. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis on urban area percentage, urbanization rate and number of universities in each district corroborated the presence of universities has boosted the urbanization rate in the host and neighboring districts. The findings have guided local government not only to implement policies into actions pertain to educational area development strategies but also to address the potential sustainability issues affected by those implementations.
