Branching Out: New Routes to Valuing Urban Treescapes

解决主题1，并在较小程度上解决主题2：74%的英国地方当局宣布气候紧急情况。他们通过增加植树目标来应对这一问题，同时也必须认识到树木可以提供的多重公共利益--健康和福祉、绿色基础设施、社会舒适性、绿色经济。地方当局需要对未来社会需求和未来树木景观的形式有一个愿景，以满足他们;我们将提供证据和决策过程来实现这样的愿景。大多数关于城市树木景观的生物物理和舒适性方面的研究忽视了更广泛的社会和文化价值，这些价值不易量化。因此，树景的象征、遗产、精神和社会文化价值没有得到有意义的解释。随着抗议活动围绕着个别树木（谢菲尔德行道树）或树林（拟议的公共森林地产销售）发生，这一问题正变得越来越严重，商业和住房开发的压力加剧了这一问题。“Branching Out”将评估三个城市的城市树木的S&C价值，并开发新的方法来绘制、预测和传达这些价值，以支持稳健的、基于证据的决策和管理。三个选定的重点城市有目的地拥有不同的规划历史，支持我们的新方法随后的广泛采用。约克（历史）和卡迪夫（后工业）是县城，而米尔顿凯恩斯是一个后60年代的新城。每个城市都有与其树木景观有关的特殊但并不罕见的挑战，已宣布气候紧急状态，并期望树木在缓解和适应方面发挥作用。我们的中心原则包括三个广泛的方法：1）共同制作，与公民和利益相关者使用审议方法，以制定一个整体的价值框架; 2）讲故事，创造过去，现在和未来的意义和价值的叙述性帐户; 3）映射，将生物物理特征与S&C价值联系起来。我们的方法将映射可概括的价值观和那些特殊和高度定位的价值观。我们的映射方法包括过去，现在和未来，使用历史资源来映射过去价值观对当前树景形式和功能的影响。我们将使用我们建立的树木公民科学平台Treezilla，从新的城市树木观测站收集生物物理数据。遥感将查明树木状况和树冠特性，并将生物物理数据按比例分配到各重点城市。该项目将满足地方当局对树木特征高分辨率绘图的需求，从而形成欧洲最大、最可靠的城市树木数据集，并附有可用于利用免费提供的卫星数据在其他城市地区重新创建此类数据集的S&C值描述符。我们共同创建的工具将为地方当局提供可用的决策证据，以预测发展或变化对S&C价值的影响，并使他们能够更准确地计算变化对生态系统服务的影响。这种多维绘图可以揭示当前和未来随着树木景观随时间变化而提供惠益方面的不平等现象，从而更好地了解如何以及在何处解决这些不平等问题。一系列设计研讨会将试验绘制与城市树木景观的遥感生物物理特征有关的S&C值的方法，并制作传感和绘制值的技术和工具。使用这些工具作为挑衅，我们将推测我们的城市树木景观可能的未来，建立在对S&C价值的欣赏和理解的基础上。通过这些方法，该项目将在地方和国家范围内的城市树木规划和决策中嵌入S&C价值，从而满足现在和未来的社会和规划需求。

Addressing theme 1 and to a lesser extent theme 2.A climate emergency has been declared by 74% of UK local authorities. As they respond to this via increased tree planting targets for carbon sequestration, it is imperative that they also realise the multiple public benefits - health and wellbeing, green infrastructure, social amenity, the green economy - that treescapes can provide. Local authorities need a vision of future societal needs and the forms of future treescapes that might meet them; we will deliver the evidence and decision making processes to realise such a vision.Most studies on the biophysical and amenity aspects of urban treescapes neglect wider social and cultural values that cannot easily be quantified. Consequently, the symbolic, heritage, spiritual and social and cultural (S&C) values of treescapes are not meaningfully accounted for. This problem is becoming increasingly acute, as protests arise around individual trees (Sheffield street trees) or woods (proposed sale of the public forest estate), exacerbated by pressure from business and housing development. 'Branching Out' will evaluate the S&C values of urban trees across three cities, and develop new ways of mapping, predicting and communicating those values to support robust, evidence-based decision making and management.The three selected focus cities purposefully have different planning histories, supporting subsequent widespread adoption of our novel approach. York (historical) and Cardiff (post-industrial) are county towns, while Milton Keynes is a post-1960s new town. Each city has particular, yet not uncommon, challenges relating to their treescapes, has declared a climate emergency, and expects trees to play a role in mitigation and adaptation. Our central tenet comprises three broad approaches: 1) co-production, using deliberative methods with citizens and stakeholders, to develop a holistic value framework; 2) storytelling, creating narrative accounts of meaning and value of the past, present and future; 3) mapping, to link biophysical features and S&C values. Our approach will map both values that are generalisable and those that are particular and highly situated.Our mapping approaches encompass the past, present and future, using historical sources to map the impact of past values on current treescape form and function. We will use our established tree citizen science platform, Treezilla, to collect biophysical data from new Urban Tree Observatories. Remote sensing will characterise tree condition and canopy properties, and scale the biophysical data across the focal cities. This project will address local authorities' need for high-resolution mapping of tree characteristics, resulting in Europe's largest, most robust urban tree dataset, accompanied by descriptors of S&C value that can be used to recreate such datasets across other urban areas using freely available satellite data. The tools we co-create will provide local authorities with useable evidence for decision making to predict the impacts of developments or changes on S&C value, and enable them to calculate more accurately the impacts of changes on ecosystem services. Such multidimensional mapping can reveal inequalities in current and future provision of benefits as treescapes change through time, providing a better understanding of how and where those inequalities can be addressed.A series of design workshops will experiment with ways of mapping S&C values in relation to the remote-sensed biophysical characteristics of our urban treescapes, producing techniques and tools for sensing and mapping values. Using these tools as provocations, we will speculate on possible futures for our urban treescapes, built around an appreciation and understanding of S&C values. Through these methods this project will embed S&C values in planning and decision-making for urban trees at local and national scales, thereby meeting society's and planning needs now and in the future.