Search

The city represents a strong societal challenge because it concentrates more than 60% of the world population and climate change may increase the vulnerability of populations to extreme thermal conditions. The ecosystem services provided by the tree in the city, in the fight against urban heat islands are a major theme of our INRA team. An experimental training on the role of green infrastructure in cities for climate change mitigation has been developed to raise citizens' awareness of sustainable development. This training is organized in partnership with the ONG EarthWatch in the form of two-day residential workshops where the ecosystem services provided by urban trees are studied according to the vitality of trees. The "citizen researchers" in training are employees of HSBC bank who wish to support, through this action, sustainable investment in the development objectives of the company and its customers. This program started in 2018 for 2 years and takes place in 3 cities: Birmingham, Chantilly, London, and breaks down into 5 formations per year and per site. It allows us to both expand our experimental sites and multiply our measurements (20 citizen researchers per training and per city) while collaborating with colleagues from University of Reading, London and Strasbourg with CNRS for a set of identical measures, on the soil, the tree (Tilia cordata) and the climate on all the sites. This training also presents our research work to decision-makers with the power to influence green infrastructure funding for the development of more sustainable cities.

Green Infrastructure is a nature-based-solution with the potential of mitigating the harmful and even deadly consequences of climate change and urbanisation in our urban areas. In particular, urban trees provide us with multiple ecosystem services, such as storm water control, carbon sequestration, soil health and temperature regulation. When supported appropriately, urban trees have impactful positive effects on urban sustainability and human wellbeing, seen as improvements not just in the environment, but also in human health and local economic growth. Nevertheless, the lack of integrated studies to understand the role of urban trees and their best management has resulted in conflicting guidance and approaches to land and park management. Moreover, the lack of community awareness and engagement around urban environmental challenges is often a further barrier for improving the sustainability and resilience of our cities. Here we present a multidisciplinary environmental citizen science research on urban trees from three European cities, Chantilly, London and Birmingham. We seek to increase our understanding of the benefits of green infrastructure with special focus on trees, using multiple disciplines (hydrology, soil health, tree vitality and microclimate) to allow local communities to better plan and adapt to extreme weather events. The success of our work relies in working with leading scientists of each of these fields as well as the community, therefore creating awareness, upskilling and integrating citizens in taking role in managing our environmental issues.