Urban Tree Growth and Drought Responses Show Evidence of Climate Resilience.

Climate change has a negative impact on the vitality of forests, and drought and heatwaves are the most influential abiotic stressors that contribute to tree health decline and mortality. Urban trees are not only vulnerable to climate change, but they also face harsh environmental conditions, including the urban heat island effect, limited soil volume and water availability. Therefore, the long-term sustainability of urban forests relies on healthy and thriving trees and the identification of species that are resilient to climate change.

Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research.

Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s-1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure, and environmental health impacts. Cities are still hotspots of air pollution and noise, suffer urban heat island effects and lack of green space, which leads to disease and mortality burdens preventable with better knowledge. Better understanding through harmonising and analysing data in large numbers of cities is essential to identifying the most effective means of disease prevention and understanding context dependencies important for policy.

Exploring the nexus of urban form, transport, environment and health in large-scale urban studies: A state-of-the-art scoping review.

Background: As the world becomes increasingly urbanised, there is recognition that public and planetary health relies upon a ubiquitous transition to sustainable cities. Disentanglement of the complex pathways of urban design, environmental exposures, and health, and the magnitude of these associations, remains a challenge. A state-of-the-art account of large-scale urban health studies is required to shape future research priorities and equity- and evidence-informed policies.

Urban greening with shrubs can supercharge invertebrate abundance and diversity.

In urban areas, diverse and complex habitats for biodiversity are often lacking. This lack of diversity not only compromises essential ecological processes, such as pollination and nutrient cycling, but also diminishes the resilience of urban ecosystems to pests and diseases. To enhance urban biodiversity, a possible solution is to integrate shrubs alongside trees, thereby increasing the overall amount of vegetation, structural complexity and the associated resource diversity.

Crown dieback and mortality of urban trees linked to heatwaves during extreme drought.

Cities have been described as 'heat islands' and 'dry islands' due to hotter, drier air in urban areas, relative to the surrounding landscape. As climate change intensifies, the health of urban trees will be increasingly impacted. Here, we posed the question: Is it possible to predict urban tree species mortality using (1) species climate envelopes and (2) plant functional traits? To answer these, we tracked patterns of crown dieback and recovery for 23 common urban tree and shrub species in Sydney, Australia during the record-breaking austral 2019-2020 summer.

Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum.

Conservation strategies based on charismatic flagship species, such as tigers, lions, and elephants, successfully attract funding from individuals and corporate donors. However, critics of this species-focused approach argue it wastes resources and often does not benefit broader biodiversity. If true, then the best way of raising conservation funds excludes the best way of spending it.

Substantial declines in urban tree habitat predicted under climate change.

Globally, local governments are increasing investment in urban greening projects. However, there is little consideration of whether the species being planted will be resilient to climate change. We assessed the distribution of climatically suitable habitat, now and in the future, for 176 tree species native to Australia, commonly planted across Australia's Significant Urban Areas (SUAs) and currently grown by commercial nurseries.

Climate, soil or both? Which variables are better predictors of the distributions of Australian shrub species?

Background: Shrubs play a key role in biogeochemical cycles, prevent soil and water erosion, provide forage for livestock, and are a source of food, wood and non-wood products. However, despite their ecological and societal importance, the influence of different environmental variables on shrub distributions remains unclear. We evaluated the influence of climate and soil characteristics, and whether including soil variables improved the performance of a species distribution model (SDM), Maxent.

Socio-economic vulnerability to climate change in the central mountainous region of eastern Mexico.

Climate change effects are expected to be more severe for some segments of society than others. In Mexico, climate variability associated with climate change has important socio-economic and environmental impacts. From the central mountainous region of eastern Veracruz, Mexico, we analyzed data of total annual precipitation and mean annual temperature from 26 meteorological stations (1922-2008) and from General Circulation Models.

[Effect of the spatial and seasonal soil heterogeneity over arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal spore abundance in the semi-arid valley of Tehuacán-Cuicatlán, Mexico].

Recent studies have shown that some species of Mimosa (Leguminosae-Mimosoideae) create resource islands (RI), rich in soil organic matter and nutrients, as well as in arbuscular mycorrhyzal fungal (AMF) spores, in the semi-arid Valley of Tehuacán-Cuicatlán. The relevance of this fact is that arid and semi-arid regions are characterized by low fertility soils and scarce precipitation, limiting plant species growth and development; this explains why the presence of AM fungi may be advantageous for mycorrhizal desert plants. Fluctuations in AMF spore numbers could be related to environmental, seasonal and soil factors which affect AMF sporulation, in addition to the life history of the host plant.