Cynnamon Dobbs

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Connecticut

As cities heat up and expand in area and population, urban forests offer a nature-based solution to enhance liveability and reduce rising temperatures in cities. However, urban forests are vulnerable to climate change and face costly establishment and maintenance challenges. Here we explore four key ecological and socioeconomic barriers to achievin...

The concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has gained interest as an approach to make significant contributions to the transformation towards more liveable, sustainable, and climate-resilient cities. However, the uptake of NbS into urban development practice is hindered by knowledge and governance barriers. Knowledge plays an essential role in evi...

As cities opt for green policies to address urban socio-ecological challenges it becomes important to evaluate how the urban landscape responds to them, and if these responses are strengthening the benefits of nature for all. The Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region is one of the most biodiverse and urbanized regions of the world, which makes...

Large-scale, abrupt ecosystem change in direct response to climate extremes is a critical but poorly documented phenomenon¹. Yet, recent increases in climate-induced tree mortality raise concern that some forest ecosystems are on the brink of collapse across wide environmental gradients2,3. Here we assessed climatic and productivity trends across t...

Nature-Based Solutions concepts and practices are being used worldwide as part of attempts to address societal challenges but have also been criticised for not dealing with deeper transformations needed to face urgent issues including biodiversity loss, climate change and inclusion. In this paper, we explore how an inclusive, integrated and long-si...

Land use and land cover largely determine the ecosystem functions that can occur, where they occur, and the organisms that enable those. The composition and configuration patterns of land use and land cover will impact urban biodiversity; therefore how we recognize and understand those patterns is relevant towards planning to enhance biodiversity i...

The last decade has seen a profound increase in the development of assessment frameworks for ecosystem services, green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS). This has improved understanding of NBS impact assessment, including processual aspects related to participatory planning and governance. We argue that, although representing a move i...

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...

It is broadly recognized the value of green spaces to human well-being and health, hence several cities are taken actions for improving their existence in urban areas. However, it is also recognized that the distribution of those green spaces is not reaching all communities evenly. Several studies on distributional justice have assess the dispariti...

The potential benefits of public urban green spaces (UGS) are widely recognized and well documented, but the actual realization of these benefits depends on appropriate design and ongoing maintenance. To properly consider the needs and preferences of users, the professionals who plan and manage UGS should ideally be guided by the same perceptions t...

Tree allergenicity has been documented as a relevant ecosystem disservice, a tradeoff to the many co-benefits of urban trees. However, information on the allergenic tree dynamics in Neotropical urban environments is scarce. We used species-level Allergenic Potential Value (APV) and pollen-emission capacity as well as data on treestructure and diver...

Impact assessment is a key step in mainstreaming urban nature-based solutions (NBS). Yet, it remains unclear if and how assessment frameworks influence urban planning, design and management. We contend that the potential of current NBS assessment frameworks is not fully exploited due to: (1) limited contextualisation of monitoring and assessment to...

Despite substantial progress in understanding global biodiversity loss, major taxonomic and geographic knowledge gaps remain. Decision makers often rely on expert judgement to fill knowledge gaps, but are rarely able to engage with sufficiently large and diverse groups of specialists. To improve understanding of the perspectives of thousands of bio...

Ecosystem collapse in direct response to climate change is a critical but poorly documented phenomenon. By assessing the climate context and productivity trends in Mediterranean ecosystems worldwide, we found a large-scale, abrupt forest decline in Chile (>90% in <100 days) as response to a sustained, acute drought unprecedented in the recent histo...

The management of urban forests is a key element of resilience planning in cities across the globe. Urban forests provide ecosystem services as well as other nature based solutions to 4.2 billion people living in cities. However, to continue to do so effectively, urban forests need to be able to thrive in an increasingly changing climate. Trees in...

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...

Record climate extremes are reducing urban liveability, compounding inequality, and threatening infrastructure. Adaptation measures that integrate technological, nature-based, and social solutions can provide multiple co-benefits to address complex socioecological issues in cities while increasing resilience to potential impacts. However, there rem...

There is an increasing recognition of the contribution of cultural ecosystem services to human wellbeing, however, research is scarce on the topic in the Global South. Evidence on urban cultural ecosystem services tends to focus on recreation and cities from the Global North. Cultural services such as social cohesion and cultural heritage are often...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

This chapter initially summarizes the issue of environmental inequalities related to greenspaces and explores possible solutions for dealing with the complexities and dynamics of urban areas to reduce greenspaces inequalities. Both inequalities related directly to greenspaces and those impacting on health, community building, natural hazards and de...

Urban green space (UGS) is an essential element in the urban environment, providing multiple ecosystem services as well as beneficial effects on physical and mental health. In a time of societal crisis these effects may be amplified, but ensuring that they are maintained requires effective planning and management – which is a complex challenge give...

This editorial article is motivated by a webinar organized by the IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) Forest Landscape Ecology Working Group (https://iufrole-wp.weebly.com/) held on June24th, 2020. We discuss here what landscape ecology has to learn from this unprecedented crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic and, s...

This editorial article is motivated by a webinar organized by the IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) Forest Landscape Ecology Working Group (https://iufrole-wp.weebly.com/) held on June 24th, 2020. We discuss here what landscape ecology has to learn from this unprecedented crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic and,...

La Infraestructura Verde, al igual que otras soluciones basadas en la naturaleza, se posiciona como una de las principales respuestas que están emprendiendo comunidades, municipios y gobiernos en ciudades de todo el mundo para enfrentar desafíos como el cambio climático, mejorar la salud pública, disminuir la segregación social y proteger la biodiv...

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...

Landscape ecology is a discipline that study the interaction between ecological processes and spatial patterns considering the dynamic of the spatial heterogeneity and it consequences on biotic and abiotic components. The most usual approach to study landscape processes considers the landscape as a set of discrete elements (land use/land cover) int...

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most urbanized and biologically diverse regions in the world but is often characterized by weak environmental governance and socioeconomic inequalities. Given large expanses of intact biomes, a long history of pre-Colombian civilizations, and recent urbanization trends, the urban ecosystem service...

Urban expansion in Latin-American cities is faster than urban planning. In order to implement sustainable planning the capacity of peri-urban areas to provide ecosystem services must be evaluated in the context of competing urbanization and conservation pressures. In this study we analyzed the effect of urban expansion on peri-urban vegetation of t...

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...

In the last two decades, the incorporation of green roofs and living walls in buildings has increased significantly worldwide because of their benefits such as building energy savings, promoting biodiversity, controlling water runoff , mitigating urban heat island effect, improving indoor and urban air quality, and connecting people with nature. Ho...

Experiences with nature through visits to protected areas provide important cultural ecosystem services that have the potential to strengthen pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Understanding accessibility to protected areas and likely preferences for enjoying the benefits of nature visits are key factors in identifying ways to reduce inequal...

Forests in cities produce goods and generate ecosystem services that improve the well-being of citizens and increase the resilience of cities to shocks.

Aim Urban macroecology studies can provide important insights into the impacts of climate change and human intervention in ecosystems. Current theory predicts that urban trees are constrained by temperature in very cold climates but not in other climates. Here we predict the climatic niche variables of planted urban tree populations from the realiz...

Latin America is one of the most urbanized region in the world, where patterns of urbanization are disorganized and disjoint from urban planning, with unknown effects for ecosystem services (ES). We evaluated the ES in Bogota and Santiago for a 30-year period. Using remote sensing data, models and census data we quantified carbon regulation, climat...

The recent decline in the health of the City of Melbourne’s deciduous tree species to a recent drought event has led to concerns about the vulnerability of the city’s trees to future climate change. Understanding the response of tree growth to past climate is critical for determining the likely impacts of climate change on future growth and can pro...

This chapter discusses the state of building- and urban-scale sustainability assessment systems and what questions the concept of smart ecology for cities addresses, and describes a novel means of accounting for urban ecosystem services using a case study site. Ecosystem services are included in the form of carbon sequestration, PM10 removal, and o...

Cities represent considerable opportunities for forwarding global biodiversity and sustainability goals. We developed key attributes for conserving biodiversity and for ecosystem services that should be included in urban-planning documents and reviewed 135 plans from 40 cities globally. The most common attributes in city plans were goals for habita...

We studied urban vegetation at the landscape scale for one hundred cities and its relation to sociodemographic and climate • The landscape metrics best describing urban vegetation structure: amount, fragmentation and distribution of green cover • The climate and socioeconomic context relates to the degree of fragmentation and amount of urban vegeta...

There is little information on how urban forest ecosystems in South America and Mediterranean climates change across both space and time. This study statistically and spatially analyzed the spatio-temporal dynamics of Santiago, Chile's urban forest using tree and plot-level data from permanent plots from 2002 to 2014. We found mortality, ingrowth,...

Popular trees that are known to grow well in a region are often the first ones people choose to plant in the landscapes that surround them. Historically, this has resulted in over-planting particular species, such as the American elm (Ulmus americana). This species had little genetic variation in its natural resistance to Dutch elm disease (Ophiost...

La Infraestructura Verde (IV) se refiere a todas las formas de vegetación urbana, que en conjunto constituyen un sistema que entrega valiosos servicios ecosistémicos tanto a nivel global como a nivel local

Our world is increasingly urbanizing which is highlighting that sustainable cities are essential for maintaining human well-being. This research is one of the first attempts to globally synthesize the effects of urbanization on ecosystem services and how these relate to governance, social development and climate. Three urban vegetation ecosystem se...

El Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo (MINVU) ha encomendado a la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile el estudio “Estimación de los costos de mantención de áreas verdes urbanas”. Éste fue liderado por la académica de la Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Dra. Sonia Reyes Paecke. La investigación es coordinada por la Comisión de Estu...

Our world is increasingly urbanizing which is highlighting that sustainable cities are essential for maintaining human wellbeing. This research is one of the first attempts to globally synthesize the effects of urbanization on ecosystem services and how these relate to governance, social development and climate. Three urban vegetation ecosystem ser...

Urbanization contributes to the loss of the world's biodiversity and the homogenization of its biota. However, comparative studies of urban biodiversity leading to robust generalities of the status and drivers of biodiversity in cities at the global scale are lacking. Here, we compiled the largest global dataset to date of two diverse taxa in citie...

We investigated the effects of various anthropogenic factors on urban soil properties in subtropical, coastal Tampa, FL, USA. Specifically, we explored the influence of (i) urbanization as measured by land use, land cover, population density and years since urban development and (ii) socioeconomic conditions as reflected in household income and pro...

Abstract of a paper presented at the 2012 Urban Biodiversity Conference, on 9 October 2012, at IIT-Bombay, India.

Background/Question/Methods Urban forest ecosystem services (ES) are ecological functions that are directly enjoyed, consumed, or used to produce specific, measurable human benefits and can have varying importance to humans. This concept is being used increasingly as a way to link ecosystem structure and function to people’s quality of life in ci...

The social and ecological processes impacting on urban forests have been studied at multiple temporal and spatial scales in order to help us quantify, monitor, and value the ecosystem services that benefit people. Few studies have comprehensively analyzed the full suite of ecosystem services, goods (ESG), and ecosystem disservices provided by an ur...

It is frequently assumed that urban soils are homogenous, heavily disturbed, or of low fertility. But recent studies show that urban soils are highly variable, ranging from highly modified to nearly undisturbed. Still, there are observable trends and patterns in urban soil characteristics have been observed. This 6-page fact sheet sheds light on ho...

Biomass is regarded as an important indicator of ecological and management processes in urban vegetation, difficult to measure but easy to interpret. Existence and growing rates of biomass can be used to calculate carbon storage and sequestration, estimate dry deposition of air pollution or volatile organic compound emissions. In cities, management...

La biomasa es considerada un importante indicador de los procesos ecológicos y de manejo que ocurren en la vegetación urbana. Es difícil de medir pero fácil de interpretar, pues refleja las condiciones del sitio y de los recursos edáficos, hídricos y de radiación solar disponibles en él. En las ciudades, las prácticas de manejo sobre los árboles af...

To sustainably manage urban areas and better assess the ecosystem services provided by urban soils, we must improve our understanding of patterns in soil properties and how they vary across urban and urbanizing landscapes. To address this need and understand urban soils, we characterized two key soil properties--soil bulk density and organic matter...

Approximately 90% of Florida residents—some 16.5 million inhabitants—live in urban areas. This ongoing urban development results in the conversion of agricultural lands, watersheds, and natural areas into a highly modified urban and suburban landscape. Florida's cities, too, have increased dramatically in size and density in recent decades. The env...

El aumento de la población en las ciudades ha llevado a un incremento de la contaminación, por consiguiente, se hace necesario buscar alternativas costo-efectivas de disminución de esta. Estudios de vegetación urbana permitirían determinar el rol de las plantas en la disminución de los niveles de CO2 atmosférico y de partículas contaminantes. Uno d...