Urban forestry

The significance of urban trees in promoting human health and well-being has been amplified by urbanization and the climate change effects. Simultaneously, advancements in remote sensing techniques have enhanced the opportunities for studying urban trees. The TreeML-Data has been compiled to support these efforts. It consists of labelled point clouds of 40 scanning projects of streets in Munich, 3,755 leaf-off (scans in winter) point clouds of individual trees, quantitative structure models (QSM), tree structure measurements, and tree graph structure models of these trees...

Drought due to climate change or reduced precipitation is one of the main factors limiting the growth and establishment of plants and is one of the most critical challenges facing humans. To investigate the effect of different levels of drought stress on some pine species, this research was carried out as a factorial experiment using two factors and a completely randomized design. It included five populations of four pine species ( Pinus brutia Ten. var. eldarica, P. nigra Arnold, P. mugo , and P. banksiana Lamb (including populations 8310055 and 8960049), and three levels of irrigation (100%, 75%, or 50% FC, denoted as normal, mild or intense drought stress, respectively) with three replicates...

State-of-the-art cloud computing platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) enable regional-to-global land cover and land cover change mapping with machine learning algorithms. However, collection of high-quality training data, which is necessary for accurate land cover mapping, remains costly and labor-intensive. To address this need, we created a global database of nearly 2 million training units spanning the period from 1984 to 2020 for seven primary and nine secondary land cover classes. Our training data collection approach leveraged GEE and machine learning algorithms to ensure data quality and biogeographic representation...

Urban trees and forests play a vital role in maintaining the balance of urban ecosystems and mitigating global warming. However, due to the lack of data and information on the potential of urban forests, their importance remains largely unknown. This study aims to describe citizens' perceptions of trees and assess the forest community's density, diversity, and carbon stock in the residential area of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second-largest city in Burkina Faso. To carry out the study, tree inventories, and interviews were conducted on 240 selected dwellinghouses using a two-stage stratified sampling approach...

Air pollution is one of the killers of our age especially for the urban areas. Urban forestry which involves planting more trees has been considered as one of the prominent strategies to mitigate air pollution. Identification of trees tolerant to air pollution is important for plantation drives being organized across the country. The present study aimed to compare the air pollution tolerance potential of 46 tree species growing in Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU) campus, Amritsar, using two indices, viz., Air Pollution Tolerance Index (APTI) and Anticipated Performance Index (API)...

Urban trees are extremely significant and provide numerous advantages for both the environment and people. In order to provide a healthy and sustainable environment, green spaces have long been seen as a crucial component of contemporary cities. Nevertheless, as urbanization and population growth have accelerated, environmental challenges have become a major worldwide issue. This study mainly focuses on the assessment of hazardous trees along the Bagmati river corridor and documents major tree species for urban forestry...

Raccoon rabies virus (RRV) has been managed using multiple vaccination strategies, including oral rabies vaccination and trap-vaccinate-release (TVR). Identifying a rabies vaccination strategy for an area is a nontrivial task. Vaccination strategies differ in the amount of effort and monetary costs required to achieve a particular level of vaccine seroprevalence (efficiency). Simulating host movement relative to different vaccination strategies in silico can provide a useful tool for exploring the efficiency of different vaccination strategies...

The beneficial effect of exposure to nature and immersion in natural environments on perceived well-being is well established. Nevertheless, we acknowledge an emerging need to disentangle the role of specific environmental features from individual factors that encourage a positive person-environment interaction. This study aimed at evaluating the associations between four buffer distances of greenness and dimensions of perceived restorativeness, with connectedness towards nature (CTN) as a confounder variable, in a sample of 312 visitors to a large urban park...

Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) have significant implications for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and deforestation. Modeling LULC changes is crucial for understanding anthropogenic impacts on environmental conservation and ecosystem services. While previous studies have focused on predicting future changes, there is a growing need to determine past scenarios using new assessment tools. This study aims to propose a methodology for LULC past scenario generation based on transition analysis. Aiming to hindcast LULC scenario in 1970 based on the transition analysis of the last 35 years (from 1985 to 2020), two machine learning algorithms, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Similarity Weighted, were employed to determine the driver variables most related to conversions in LULC and to simulate the past...

The increasing emissions of gaseous pollutants of anthropogenic origin, such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ), which causes global warming, have raised great interest in developing and improving processes that allow their mitigation. Among them, adsorption on porous materials has been proposed as a sustainable alternative. This work presents a study of CO2 equilibrium adsorption at low temperatures (0, 10, and 20 °C) over a wide range of low pressures, on activated carbon derived from Eucalyptus (ES) and Patula pine (PP) forest waste, and carbonaceous material derived from waste tires (WT)...

The process of water retention on the surface of the assimilation apparatus of plants is inextricably linked with the water capacity of tree crowns and depends mainly on the condition of the leaf itself. The main objective of the present study was to investigate how the honeydew coverage and the location of trees related to the content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons affected the differences in the capability of small-leaved linden leaves to capture water. Honeydew coverage was determined with the use of AutoCAD, whereas the content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons was determined using gas chromatography...

In the era of stock renewal, the construction of university campuses in China's first-tier cities has shifted from demolition and construction to renewal and upgrading, in which public landscape space is the main environment for students' daily life, learning and entertainment. Especially during the outbreak of the recent COVID-19 epidemic, it has become an important way for students to interact with nature and obtain emotional healing. In the existing studies, there is a lack of discussion on the correlation between the spatial characteristics of the updated campus landscape and students' emotional attachment, and there are few quantitative studies...

Urban forests are being threatened by rapid urbanization, biodiversity crises, and climate variability. In response, governments are increasingly collaborating with the public for solutions to these mounting challenges. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are dominant players in these collaborations because of their ability to supplement governments' expertize and resources and bring social and ecological issues to the forefront of civic agendas. Despite their growing visibility in urban forest management, there is a lack of attention directed to the forms and range of NGO relationships...

A mathematical epidemiological model incorporating the mobility of rodents and human groups among zones of less or major contact between them is presented. The hantavirus infection dynamics is expressed using a model type SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed), which incorporates the displacement of the rodent and the human, between the urban and rural sector, the latter being subdivided in populated and non-populated. The results show the impact that rodent or human displacement may have on the propagation of hantavirus infection...

Greenspaces can provide restorative experiences, offer opportunities for outdoor recreation, and reduce mental fatigue; all of which may improve community health and safety. Yet few studies have examined the neighborhood-level benefits of greenspace in reducing violent deaths. This study explored the association between three distinct greenspace metrics: public greenspace quantity, public greenspace accessibility, neighborhood tree canopy cover, and intentional deaths (i.e., homicides and suicides). Generalized linear models and spatial error models investigated the association between greenspace, tree canopy and intentional deaths in three geographically distinct cities in North Carolina...

Inequity in access to urban greenspaces might contribute to health disparities in the USA via multiple pathways. Academic medical centres can promote health equity in their surrounding communities by partnering with community organisations to improve greenspace access in urban environments. Academic medical centres are also uniquely positioned to advance health-equity leadership among the next generation of doctors through medical-education initiatives; of particular importance is that medical professionals are involved in advocating for the expansion of greenspace access due to its direct relationship with human health and wellness...

Inequality in access to urban green infrastructures has been a major concern among scholars and governments, especially since the COVID-19 outbreak. There is a lack of knowledge on how people respond to the pandemic regarding the usage of green infrastructure in cities. This paper explores the shifts in visitation to parks and trails, two popular green infrastructures in Salt Lake County, Utah, by analyzing the results of a survey conducted during the pandemic. Our conceptualization considers personal and neighborhood-level factors, including personal socioeconomic status, existing inequalities of green infrastructures, urban form, and neighborhood conditions...

Liquidambar formosana Hance is widely planted in urban landscapes in China owing to its ornamental red leaves. In June 2020, a distinctive leaf spot disease was observed on L. formosana in Nanjing Forestry University, Jiangsu Province of China (32°4'49"N, 118°48'56"E). Approximately 61% (14 out of 23) of the trees displayed leaf spots. The diseased symptoms included irregularly distributed spots that showed black or dark brown, and occasionally with pale green halo. Two representative trees were selected for sampling and five leaves with typical symptoms were selected randomly for isolation...

The exponential growth of China's digital economy has exerted a profound influence on economic advancement and income distribution. To effectively tackle income inequality, it is essential to incorporate the analysis of digital economy development within the framework of fiscal expenditure. This study utilizes a comprehensive panel dataset encompassing 276 cities in China during the period from 2011 to 2020. Employing the fixed-effect model and instrumental variable method, the research investigates the influence of fiscal expenditure on the income gap while investigating the moderating effect of the digital economy...

Prescribed nature walks frequently yield improvements to mood and cognition as observed in experimental studies. Research that uses real life settings such as self-determined time exercising outdoors for restorative health benefits may more accurately elicit effects than time-specified study protocols. This study examined in situ psycho-cognitive outcomes of routine walks in urban greenspace to test the concept that self-set exposure duration and not context alone is related to magnitude of psycho-cognitive benefit...