Urban Forest and Climate Vulnerability in Niagara
Canada’s demographic shift towards urban areas makes environmental threats to human-nature ecosystems the more imminent. Climate change is a prominent environmental threat, and assessing the vulnerability of cities to it is important. Climate vulnerability research in the urban forest context is growing, particularly for areas like water resources, energy and health, but other areas, such as natural services and infrastructure, are still underdeveloped or in their infancy.
The forest is usually the dominant natural feature of the urban landscape and urban trees provide multiple benefits. Because climate is one of the main controllers of plant distribution around the world, urban forest responses to climate change should be appropriately included in its management. One of the steps to do this is developing the area of climate vulnerability assessments for the urban forest.
The video below is a quick visualization of the importance of urban forests and of the benefits that that they provide.