An integrative understanding of the role that urban trees plays for people and nature

There is a huge pressure on cities to build robust urban ecosystems in a way that can withstand global change while providing good living conditions for citizens.

The accomplishment of this goal is essential to ensure an equitable future maintaining the benefits of natures contributions to people (NCP) that the urban green infrastructures (UGI, i.e., trees, parks and urban forests) provide.

To achieve this challenge, we first must identify which type of UGI better adapt to present and future conditions and hence increase its long-term ecosystem functionality and resilience. Thus, there is an urgent need of empirical research to optimize UGI functions and NCP, which are still insufficient.

Additionally, societys preferences for given UGIs may not coincide with UGIs that maximize natures benefits to people. This could add new trade-offs between social and ecological dimensions of those benefits.

The main objective of BioCiTrees is to build mechanistic models testing which species maximize different NCP (i.e., air purification and insect biodiversity support) while exploring trade-offs between societys preference for certain UGIs and the provision of those contributions.

For this, BioCiTrees will apply trait-based approaches to identify key traits and community functional components that maximize the benefits of those contributions in the context of global change, an evidence that is lacking.

Moreover, this project will develop a survey to identify different stakeholders preferences for certain UGIs, providing support for establishing targets to co-develop UGIs taking cultural values into account.

BioCiTrees will help to fill a major gap in our understanding of the underlaying mechanisms controlling NCP in urban ecosystems so that we can use the full potential of the UGI for the benefit of urban citizens while tackling global challenges, a priority of the Horizon Europe and the EU Green Deal.