Modeling regional-scale urban forest composition, canopy structure, and benefits to support green infrastructure planning, oak ecosystem recovery, and climate adaptation

Urban forests provide myriad benefits, but are sometimes overlooked as a component of regional-scale green infrastructure.  Urban forests, like forests in general, are vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts such as climate change and exotic pest introductions. In order to assess urban forest benefits and vulnerability managers and planners need to understand urban forest composition and structure at multiple scales – from regional to site-scale. Much of the decision making around urban forests is done at the municipal level, but data often do not fit that scale. However, there are many difficulties in understanding urban forests at a fine-scale, including high diversity, turnover, spatial variability, the lack of species-habitat relationships, and the importance of poorly understood socioeconomic drivers of composition. Ongoing work in the Chicago area is focused on evaluation of urban forest composition, assessment of vulnerability of urban forest to climate change and invasive pests, and prediction of changes in benefits associated with urban forest in the future under scenarios of climate change and development at variety of scales - from regional to site-level.