Hello internet!
I hope you have enjoyed my last two posts on the careers aspect of the module, there are more of those to come, but this week we are returning to biology some of you will be glad to hear!
The seminar I attended this month was entitled ‘Don’t panic! A hitchhikers guide to urban forestry’ given by Tim Hall. While my fellow bloggers and I were discussing our appreciation for the title which will appeal to any Sci-Fi fanatic and whether or not the words Urban and Forest could be used together in the same sentence he began..
Tim started out by defining what exactly an ‘urban forest’ is, he explained that the term itself has only become widely used in the large few years as populations have increased and that it is still rather flexible depending on the context it is being used, for example Stockholm’s government class an urban forest as being within an hour’s drive of the population while some research papers which need to be more specific in order to get funding can define it as a population of trees with in 1km of a 2000+ population . But why is Urban forestry so important?! Well it turns out that trees provide an awful lot of ecosystem services which are becoming more and more important in our increasingly urbanised population, currently at 80% urban in the Uk and worldwide is predicted to rise to 70% (from 50%) by 2050.
But what do these urban trees look like to us and what are those all-important ecosystem services that they provide? Next time you leave your house, look around; there can be a surprizing amount of trees in our concrete utopias. Look in the parks, the gardens, the leafy suburbs and even those trees used to decorate our streets and they are all of great benefit to the area you are in, more than you properly realise .
In the Summer they provide a cooling effect transpiring up to 450litres of water a day acting as a natural air conditioning system for our streets and providing shade, while in the winter the lack of leaves increases the sunlight warming our streets and they help to buffer the urban heat island effect.
What about Water management? This is very topical considering our recent flooding events, it is estimated that a 20% loss in trees within urban areas would result in an extra million litres of surface water during storm conditions exasperating any existing flooding problem.
What about the health benefits? We all consider trees to be good for the air quality in the area, but the extent to which that is true is truly shocking as Tim explained. The trees in the city of Chicago alone can remove up to 10.8 tons of pollution from the air every day. (wow). This has noticeable effects on conditions such as child asthma. Several studies have also noted the positive effect on surgical healing rates (being quicker with less need for pain relief) and on our mental wellbeing with the exercise of ‘forest bathing’ becoming increasingly popular.
There are also many Social and economic benefits with parks increasing land value and tempting shoppers to stay that little bit longer on the high street as well as the endless amounts community projects and school trips that can happen in a woodland area.
However, as Tim pointed out, even though trees do their very best for us, we literally cannot see the wood for the trees some times and constantly complain about our views, shade, leaves, height and other people using the woodland areas (although sometimes they are being used for the wrong reasons).
Tim concluded with some remarks about the future of urban forestry, thankfully, all the benefits mentioned above are slowly being recognised and local governments and other organisations are moving towards protecting and even increasing the amount of urban forestry!
Thank you for reading and I hope I was able to do this truly interesting seminar some justice!
Until next time Internet!
D
Some more Information about Tim : http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-6AHLZU
A very interesting video by American forestry which covers many of the issues mentioned by tim : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz_rZH1lYk
BSc Biology, What next? 
A good blog that very accurately reports what Tim said. However, it could use some pictures, or something to break the text up a bit. Having gone to the seminar, I don’t feel like I learnt anything new from this post. It would be good to know your opinion on the topic, and how you think it could develop in future.
Also, have you looked into the suject any further since the talk? I haven’t had a chance to do an back ground reading yet, but I’m sure there’s lots of useful information out there, given what Tim tlked about.
Overall this is a very well written blog (apart from a few spelling mistakes) and was easy to follow; I just found the lack of pictures made it a bit hard to remain interested throughout.
This really is a great blog! you summarise the seminar really well (one that i didn’t attend) and i feel like I know all the key points that were covered with no gaps, well done!
I like how you have used questions to start a paragraph and bold text to highlight key points! Linking to a website and a video is also really useful.
In future it would be nice to if you could include some pictures to break up the text a little bit and illustrate what you are saying. You could even back up what you are saying with some sources to make this blog even better. I have found a paper that evaluates The possible negative effects of having trees and forests close to people (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934103000236) which is worth a read.
It would be really nice if you could end this blog with either what you left the seminar with in terms of new knowledge or your opinion on the subject and how urban forestry could benefit/disadvantage people in the future.
Pingback: Comments: March | JAMES HADEN
I really enjoyed reading your post. Even though I did not attend this seminar, your post gave a pretty good idea of the topic and what was discussed. I liked the way you broke up the text and bolded the important points. The use of questions also helped put everything in context. My only observation would be, maybe, to mention the sources from where you got your information (for example, the source for the definition of “Urban forestry” used by the Swedish government). It might be worth also putting some extra information about “forest bathing” (origins, curing properties).
I’m really glad to hear that the advantages of living in a vegetated area are finally getting their proper recognition and, as you mentioned, increasing the area of urban forests is one of the ways forward in tackling the increasing amount of pollution (this might be even more useful in heavily industrialised or polluted areas, such as Beijing).
I too attended this seminar, and although I did not write about it, it was really interesting to read your blog and get a feel for somebody else’s views on the topic.
It is quite hard to present any sort of balanced argument on this topic when the benefits of urban forestry so obviously outweigh any negatives, which are easily identifiable by your convenient emboldening.
As I fully agree with your well written blog, I thought I’d just point out some of the more unusual elements of urban forestry presented in this article by the guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/gallery/2011/oct/26/living-buildings-garden-museum-exhibition#/?picture=380891303&index=8
Arguably the most extreme example in that article is the vertical forest in Milan, which may become commonplace in cities everywhere in the near future. Here is a paper which outlines the vertical forest and other methods of urban forestry that may be the future for our cities:
Click to access Saiu.2011.pdf
Pingback: April Comments | Why Do We Love Science
Pingback: April blog and comments | Hannah Jones