Camilo Ordóñez Barona

Camilo Ordoñez Barona

Climate change is a likely addition to the unpredictable challenges urban communities will face. Enhancing urban forests has gained prominence as a climate adaptation tool in cities. The fact that urban forests are also vulnerable is now starting to emerge. Many urban forest management professionals do not know how to take climate change into accou...

A significant component of the urban ecosystem is the urban forest. It is also the quintessential meeting point of culture and nature, so it is critical to incorporate values-based approaches to managing them. The values that really count are those of urban citizens. A novel qualitative method was used to determine what qualities of the urban fores...

Nature-based solutions are informed by how communities think about nature. However, research on how urban communities think about urban nature is seldom carried out across urban contexts. In doing so it can be useful to select specific aspects of urban nature, such as urban forests and urban trees. Our study responds to these needs by measuring the...

Urban forest management plans (UFMPs) are a key element of the planning process in urban forestry. While we can learn about management intentions by analyzing the content of UFMPs, less is known about happens after plan implementation has begun. This study fills this gap by exploring how is UFMP implementation advancing. To do this we asked municip...

Urban forests are a critical element of urban environmental planning. Greater awareness of the ecosystem services provided by urban forests over the last two decades has led to an increased interest in improving urban forest management. In Canada, the conditions of management are usually articulated by a municipal government in an urban forest mana...

City street trees are prominent features of urban green infrastructure and can be useful for climate change adaptation. However, street trees may face particularly challenging conditions in urban environments. Challenges include limited soil and space for growth surrounded by sealed surfaces, construction that damages roots, poor pruning and manage...

Urban forests are characterized by relationships between people and trees, where urban trees provide benefits to people and people make decisions impacting trees. People’s perceptions of urban forests are related to the cognitive processes that underpin benefits received from trees, while also influencing support for or against trees and their mana...

Executive Summary Urban forests are a critical infrastructure asset to Canadian cities, but little is known about the diverse perceptions diverse people hold about urban trees in diverse contexts, or how people may respond to changes in the abundance of urban forests. This means we cannot yet quantify the social and ecological benefits of urban fo...

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While urban trees can be important determinants of human health and wellbeing in world cities, the specific influence of nearby urban trees upon human wellbeing has not been adequately explored. While many studies have associated urban greenery abundance with wellbeing scores, many measures of urban greenery do not specify the type of vegetation or...

As cities attempt to ameliorate urban green inequities, a potential challenge has emerged in the form of green gentrification. Although practitioners are central to urban greening and associated gentrification, there has yet to be an exploration of practitioner perspectives on the phenomenon. We fill this gap with an online survey of 51 urban green...

As keystone structures in urban ecosystems, trees are critical to addressing many of the current livability, health, and environmental challenges facing cities. Every day, trees are removed from urban landscapes as part of routine management. These tree removals are an opportunity for implementing manipulative experiments to directly measure the so...

Urban forests have the potential to provide an array of ecosystem services that support urban biodiversity and healthy communities and people. Like in other countries, municipalities across Canada have adopted urban forest management plans (UFMPs), which are documents where cities articulate desired outcomes and associated objectives with urban for...

Experimentally manipulating urban tree abundance and structure can help explore the complex and reciprocal interactions among people, biodiversity and the services urban forests provide to humans and wildlife. In this study we take advantage of scheduled urban tree removals to experimentally quantify the benefits that urban trees provide to humans...

Many world cities want to expand the number of urban trees. How this expansion occurs should consider what people expect from trees based on how they experience and perceive these trees. Therefore, we need a better understanding of how people perceptually respond to urban tree abundance. This research examined whether people’s satisfaction with urb...

Many world cities want to expand the number of urban trees. How this expansion occurs should consider what people expect from trees based on how they experience and perceive these trees. Therefore, we need a better understanding of how people perceptually respond to urban tree abundance. This research examined whether people’s satisfaction with urb...

Addressing urban forest management and governance challenges is fundamental for implementing urban forest policies. Most of the evidence on this topic comes from Global North cities, so little is known about how urban forest management and governance are experienced by urban forest actors in Global South cities, including Latin American and the Car...

Urban tree planting initiatives have been blooming worldwide to help tackle climate change and nurture healthy living environments for people and biodiversity. Many initiatives are characterized by ambitious targets based on the number of trees planted but are not defined by clear objectives, which hampers the success of these initiatives in achiev...

Researchers studying urban nature should engage with qualitative social methods (QSM) because cities are full of people and what they think and feel matters. QSM are associated with a social science research approach that focuses on understanding how people think and behave by collaborating with participants in the generation of knowledge and inclu...

Urban nature management is usually guided by the most common, frequently mentioned, or easily elicited perceptions expressed by a dominant cultural group. This is unlikely to encourage widespread community support or foster urban nature stewardship in the long run. Considering how people representing diverse cultural identities perceive the value o...

Empirical assessments of the experiences and perceptions of urban green space (UGS) in a social housing context are scant. Studying UGS perception in these contexts is important to understand how people experience and derive benefits from UGS in disadvantaged communities. This short communication provides interdisciplinary and methodological guidan...

Across the world, planning and decision-making for urban forests increasingly seeks to include diverse perspectives. Yet, research on people’s perceptions of urban forests and urban trees is fragmented. To integrate and critically analyse this body of research, we conducted a review of empirical studies about people’s perceptions of urban forests a...

Green infrastructure (GI) refers to trees, rain gardens, rain barrels, and other features that address stormwater management, climate change and other challenges facing many cities. GI is often not equitably distributed across urban landscapes, making its benefits unevenly experienced. Cities have multiple initiatives focused on different types of...

Urban forests provide ecosystem services to more than 4.2 billion people living in cities; however, the provision of these services is threatened by climate change. Cities will experience novel, warmer climates that will impact tree species survival. Here, we present an empirical approach combining the use of climate analogues and vulnerability met...

https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2022/08/17/committing-to-diversity-in-the-research-on-peoples-perceptions-of-urban-nature/

Many world cities are looking into nature-based solutions to increase resilience and liveability. These solutions include increasing the number of trees and enhancing tree canopy cover. However, cities often struggle to articulate the social and ecological benefits of these natural elements. Advances in urban social-ecological research are needed t...

The success of urban forest management strategies is dependent on public support for and engagement with urban trees. Satisfaction with urban trees and their management, and the level of trust people have in urban tree managers, are useful for understanding public opinions. Yet these concepts, and the mechanisms leading to the formation of public o...

Cities around the world are diverse. People’s perceptions of urban forests may vary according to urban contexts and people’s diverse identities. A better understanding of these diverse perceptions is critical to support stewardship initiatives, inform urban tree decisions, and guide community engagement, among other key management and governance pr...

The success of urban forestry depends on community support and engagement. How satisfied is the community with their urban trees is a useful way to understand these processes. However, public perception is complex and depends on a wide array of cognitive factors. How these factors relate and influence people’s level of satisfaction with urban trees...

Cities in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region and around the world are setting long-term greening goals that include planting more trees and increasing tree-canopy cover. Research on LAC cities has mainly focused on biodiversity and vegetation, with little understanding of the mechanisms underlying the decisions through which stakeholders...

Most studies of urban forestry look at vegetation on public land. Yet, to meet ambitious urban forest targets, cities must attempt to maintain or increase trees and canopy cover on private urban land too. How to influence what happens to trees on private urban land has been a matter of debate for decades. This presentation will reflect on the value...

Green infrastructure (GI) features in private residential outdoor space play a key role in expanding GI networks in cities and provide multiple co-benefits to people. However, little is known about residents’ intended behavior concerning GI in private spaces. Resident homeowners in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) voluntarily participated in an anonymous...

Green infrastructure (GI) initiatives, including programs to plant trees and install bioswales, have been adopted by a growing number of local government and non-governmental organizations. While the details of these programs vary, a common characteristic of most Canadian and US GI initiatives is a distributed approach that includes both public and...

Urban trees are recognized as critical for biodiversity, health, well-being, and climate-adaptation. As trees age and increase in size, they provide more significant benefits, such as cooling and shade. While many cities have ambitious plans to increase tree numbers and canopy cover, cities also struggle to maintain and increase tree numbers. This...

Urban forest strategies aimed at the retention and protection of existing urban trees are an expression of nature-based solutions (NbS), understood broadly as actions that can address environmental, ecological, and societal challenges. Many cities have established long-term goals to retain and protect already existing urban trees as an NbS, but the...

Executive Summary: Urban street trees are recognised as being important to people and wildlife in Ballarat, but not a lot is known about how trees contribute to social and biodiversity benefits. To help fill this gap, a research group led by the University of Melbourne has partnered with the City of Ballarat to quantify the social and ecological...

Most studies of urban forest management look at vegetation on public land. Yet, to meet ambitious urban forest targets, cities must attempt to maintain or increase trees and canopy cover on private urban land too. In this study, we review and evaluate international approaches to protecting and retaining trees on private urban land. Our study combin...

As the world is increasingly urbanized, cities face critical challenges to supporting human wellbeing, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience. Many of these challenges can be addressed by urban forest conservation and enhancement initiatives. Urban forests provide many ecosystem services, such as temperature regulation, increased wildlif...

Many world cities have plans to increase tree numbers and canopy cover. However, cities often struggle to articulate the social and ecological benefits of urban trees. Advances in experimental socio-ecological research are needed to understand the combined social and ecological benefits of urban trees. Experimentally measuring the ecological and so...

This second edition covers recent developments around the world with contributors from 33 different countries. It widens the handbook’s scope by including ecological design; consideration of cultural dimensions of the use and conservation of urban nature; the roles of government and civil society; and the continuing issues of equity and fairness in...

In many cities, private trees dominate urban tree canopy cover, but densification often means fewer private trees and diminishing urban tree canopy cover. Local governments use several mechanisms to protect trees on private land, but their strengths and weaknesses are not well understood. We review private tree protections in six local governments...

The provision of ecosystem services is a prominent rationale for urban greening, and there is a prevailing mantra that 'trees are good'. However, understanding how urban trees contribute to sustainability must also consider disservices. In this perspective article, we discuss recent research on ecosystem disservices of urban trees, including infras...

Decisions about urban forests are critical to urban liveability and resilience. This study aimed to evaluate the range of positions held by urban forest managers from local governments in the state of Victoria, Australia, regarding the management and governance challenges that affect their decision-making. This study was based on a Q-method approac...

Trees on private urban land (i.e., land owned and managed by private landowners) are central to the ambitious plans of many global cities to increase urban canopy-cover. This presents many problems and often causes tensions in local and state governments due to the difficulty in controlling and regulating private ownership. To help address this, th...

Peri-urban dynamics are challenging the sustainability of Australian cities. Peri-urban areas represent transition points of planning regimes and governance structures and processes between urban and rural spaces, usually characterized by intensified growth patterns and fast expansion of urban physical elements. These dynamics challenge the impleme...

Awareness of the benefits of urban trees has led many cities to develop ambitious targets to increase tree numbers and canopy cover. Policy instruments that guide the planning of cities recognize the need for new governance arrangements to implement this agenda. Urban forests are greatly influenced by the decisions of municipal managers, but there...

Many cities face a struggle to reconcile ambitious tree canopy cover targets with urban development pressures. Canopy cover in The City of Melbourne, Australia, which has a target of 40% canopy cover on public land by 2040, was analysed together with individual tree removal data, with particular focus on how many street trees were removed near majo...

Research on urban forests has expanded in the last 30 years in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Nonetheless, urban forestry has been explored to much less extent in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, despite being one of the most urbanized and biodiverse regions in the world. We address this gap by providing a baseline understanding...

Many Australian cities have ambitious targets to increase tree numbers and canopy cover, but they also remove many urban trees every year. This is because many large, old trees pose a hazard to human safety and hinder construction activities, and hence are often removed. However, the services that trees provide are more significant as trees age and...

Local government strategies and policies aimed at increasing tree planting and canopy-cover have become a familiar feature in many cities. However, the role of private urban land areas in a city’s ambitious plans to retain and increase the number of trees and canopy-cover is usually overlooked. In 2019, the University of Melbourne was funded by Hor...

In Australia and many other countries of the Global North, public housing estates are being dismantled and redeveloped to create mixed-income communities. Proponents of redevelopment argue that the introduction of private housing will reduce public housing residents' experiences of stigma. In this paper, we interrogate these assumptions by identify...

Cities across the world increasingly reflect the ethno-cultural diversity of a globalized society. How people interact with, and experience urban nature varies with the form, structure, and function of the space, but also with peoples’ ethno-cultural identity. In this study, we investigated the values that gardeners and park users of different ethn...

Nature-based solutions offer an exciting prospect for resilience building and advancing urban planning to address complex urban challenges simultaneously. In this article, we formulated through a coproduction process in workshops held during the first IPCC Cities and Climate Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada, in March 2018, a series of synthes...

It is becoming increasingly important to audit nature-based solutions (NBS) projects to understand their utility in addressing urban sustainability goals. However, the ecological and social complexity of such projects makes it difficult to develop performance indicators. Focusing on specific case studies and specific natural elements could advance...

Urban trees are critical for the future of sustainable cities. While many cities have ambitious targets to increase tree-canopy cover, many municipal governments also spend millions of dollars planting and maintaining urban trees every year. The services that trees provide are more significant as trees age and increase in size. However, large, old...

Urban areas face several challenges, including intensified urbanization, a deteriorating natural environment, increasing climate-related risks, and new demands for participatory governance processes. Nature-based solutions, such as creating new greenspaces and planting more urban trees, have been proposed to help cities address many of these challe...

It is challenging to successfully grow trees in highly-urbanized areas, such as downtown commercial-retail districts. As part of a streetscape revitalization project, initiated in 2010, 133 London planetrees (Platanus × acerifolia) were planted in structural soil cells along the downtown, commercial district of Bloor Street in Toronto, Ontario, Can...

Urban trees are increasingly being recognized as critical for the future of sustainable cities. Many cities have ambitious targets to increase tree-canopy cover. The success of these initiatives depends on understanding how people make decisions about urban forests based on their values, preferences, scientific evidence, and social needs. However,...

Salts used for de-icing roads and sidewalks in northern climates can have a significant impact on water quality and vegetation. Sub-surface engineering systems, such as structural soil cells, can regulate water runoff and pollutants, and provide the necessary soil volume and irrigation to grow trees. However, the ability of such systems to manage d...

This document provides a synopsis of an investigation on the movement of de-icing salts in structural soil cells and their impact on the vitality of trees planted along the Martin Goodman Trail on Queen’s Quay Boulevard, Toronto, Canada. Background & Objectives - In 2017, the UFRED group of Ryerson University investigated the seasonal variation of...

This document provides a synopsis of an investigation undertaken to better understand the decline and mortality of street trees planted in structural soil cells along Bloor Street, Toronto, Canada.

Understanding how urban nature is important to the public can broaden management objectives and give citizens a say in how nature is managed in the places where they live. However, studies on the topic do not usually integrate multiple research methods: and case studies, or have an opportunity to reflect on an understanding of the value-elicitation...

Understanding how different ethno-cultural groups value urban nature is important to understand the role of ethno-cultural diversity in urban ecosystem management. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper summarizes the empirical evidence on how different ethno-cultural groups use, perceive, prefer, and assign meaning to urban nature. I...

The Bloor Street Revitalization project in Toronto, Canada, was finalized in 2011 and involved the planting of 133 London planetree (Platanus × acerifolia) in structural soil cells (Silva Cells®). These trees generally performed poorly, and in 2015 all were removed and replaced mostly with cultivars of elm (Ulmus sp.). In 2015, the UFRED group at R...

30 May –4 June, 2016

28 March –1 April 2016

With the majority of Canada's population concentrated in cities, it is important to determine what people consider important in urban nature. The concept of values can help illustrate what people consider important in urban nature beyond utilitarian considerations. This is the case for urban forests. However, many studies about public opinion on ur...

Urban trees are a dominant natural element in cities; they provide important ecosystem services to urban citizens and help urban areas adapt to climate change. Many rationales have been proposed to provide a purpose for urban forest management, some of which have been ineffective in addressing important ecological and social management themes. Amon...

We argue that a healthy urban forest contributes immensely to the sustainability of cities. The argument is based on a comprehensive array of values elicited from Canadians in several cities. To begin, we define the urban forest as inclusive of all the trees in the city and thus representing the predominant contributor to a city's green infrastruct...

Climate adaptation is being embraced by many municipalities worldwide. An element of this is the planting and protection of urban trees. However, the fact that climate change will also have an impact on urban trees has been largely overlooked. We argue that climate vulnerability assessments are necessary for addressing climate adaptation in urban f...

Beckley, T.; Duinker, P.N.; Sinclair, J.; Ordóñez, C., Kekacs, A.; Cushing, S.; Diduck, J.; Owen, R. (2014) Talking about the trees among the trees: in-situ methods for forest-values elicitation. Presentation. International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM2014) (International), 9th -13th of June, 2014, Hannover, Germany.

Urban forests are an integral part of urban ecosystems and quality of life. With an overwhelmingly urban population, Latin American countries benefit considerably from their urban forests. However, little is known about the values that make such forests important. The goal of this study was to provide an overview of urban forest values in Colombia....

Duinker, P.N.; Steenberg, J.; Ordóñez, C.; Cushing, S.; Perfitt, K.R. (2014) Governance and Urban Forests in Canada: Roles of Non-Government. Paper and Presentation. Proceedings of Trees, People, and the Built Environment II Conference (International), Birmingham, UK, 2nd-3rd April 2014. (Online: http://www.charteredforesters.org/resources/download...

Canadian Urban Forest Research Group (CUFRG)

Ecological integrity has been an umbrella concept guiding ecosystem management for several decades. Though plenty of definitions of ecological integrity exist, the concept is best understood through related concepts, chiefly, ecosystem health, biodiversity, native species, stressors, resilience and self-maintenance. Discussions on how ecological in...

Ordóñez, C., (2012). Adapting urban forests to climate change. Proceedings of Canadian Urban Forest Conference 10 (CUFC 10) (National), 2nd-5th October, 2012, London, ON, Canada (published online: http://treecanada.ca/en/resources/publications/cufc10-london-october-2-4-2012/)

Este libro analiza, desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, la situación del medio ambiente en Colombia, estableciendo lineamientos de política públicapara el desarrollo sostenible en el país. Se inicia con la discusión conceptual sobre el estado del arte del concepto de desarrollo sostenible. Partiendo de este análisis, el libro aborda los princ...

Incisive interpretations of urban-forest sustainability are important in furthering our understanding of how to sustain the myriad values associated with urban forests. Our analysis of earlier interpretations reveals conceptual gaps. These interpretations are attached to restrictive definitions of a sustainable urban forest and limited to a rather...