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Urban Forest Indicators for Planning and Designing Future Forests Barron, Sara; Sheppard, S. R. J. (Stephen Richard John), 1952-; Condon, Patrick M.

Abstract

This paper describes a research project exploring future urban forests. This study uses a Delphi approach to develop a set of key indicators for healthy, resilient urban forests. Two groups of experts participated in the Delphi survey: International academics and local practitioners. The results of the Delphi indicate that “urban tree diversity” and “physical access to nature” are indicators of high importance. “Tree risk” and “energy conservation” were rated as indicators of relatively low importance. Results revealed some differences between academics and practitioners in terms of their rating of the indicators. The research shows that some indicators rated as high importance are not necessarily the ones measured or promoted by many municipal urban forestry programs. In particular, social indicators of human health and well-being were rated highly by participants, but not routinely measured by urban forestry programs.

Item Metadata

Title
Urban Forest Indicators for Planning and Designing Future Forests
Creator
Barron, Sara; Sheppard, S. R. J. (Stephen Richard John), 1952-; Condon, Patrick M.
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Date Issued
2016-09-16
Description
This paper describes a research project exploring future urban forests. This study uses a Delphi approach to develop a set of key indicators for healthy, resilient urban forests. Two groups of experts participated in the Delphi survey: International academics and local practitioners. The results of the Delphi indicate that “urban tree diversity” and “physical access to nature” are indicators of high importance. “Tree risk” and “energy conservation” were rated as indicators of relatively low importance. Results revealed some differences between academics and practitioners in terms of their rating of the indicators. The research shows that some indicators rated as high importance are not necessarily the ones measured or promoted by many municipal urban forestry programs. In particular, social indicators of human health and well-being were rated highly by participants, but not routinely measured by urban forestry programs.
Subject
Indicators; Urban forest; Delphi; Urban design; Green infrastructure; Climate change; Ecosystem services
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-05-24
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
CC BY 4.0
DOI
10.14288/1.0378990
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70317
Affiliation
Applied Science, Faculty of; Forestry, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of; Forest Resources Management, Department of
Citation
Forests 7 (9): 208 (2016)
Publisher DOI
10.3390/f7090208
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

CC BY 4.0