Making Sense of Urban Soil Heterogeneity for Urban Forest Ecosystem Service Provision in a Changing Climate

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Background. Cities require specialized knowledge to guide nature-based solutions to climate challenges. Urban forests are key to this nature-based toolkit, but urbanization massively disrupts soils creating new challenges for trees. My program seeks to uncover links between soil and urban forest health in a variety of land development and urban site engineering contexts by focusing on two key areas: soil organic carbon (SOC) and hydrology. Urban soils have multiple functions: supporting buildings and roads, mediating the urban water cycle, and providing water and nutrients to vegetation. These roles are often in conflict-and cities work to manage these conflicts through site engineering and soil management. My focus on SOC stems from its critical role not only in greenhouse gas emissions, but also its role in soil aggregate formation and soil structure. These soil physical properties determine how both water and roots move through the soil system, affecting stormwater mitigation, plant-available water, tree and infrastructure stability, and urban forest health. Objectives. My program will make sense of this complex web of actors and activities at both the site and regional scale by using an urban forest typology to make sense of soil patterns and then study those patterns to inform management and policy and scale up findings to the entire city. Urban tree patterns are little understood, and can provide powerful new insights into how urban management affects trees and soils. Methods. This work has three components: 1) a typology framework developed with LiDAR and cluster analysis that identifies small-scale urban forest types and allows their interacting characteristics to be studied as a system, 2) an analysis of the performance under climate change of engineered soils for supporting trees by setting up soil and tree monitoring programs equipped with wireless sensors, and 3) site-scale investigations of SOC dynamics and hydrology using systematic soil sampling and relating these data to typology patterns. Thus we will identify key factors for urban forest climate resilience and strategies for soil management that cities can use. Training. I am training a new generation of multidisciplinary professionals able to collect high-quality data in ever-evolving urban settings. Urban forestry is an emerging discipline and presents an ideal opportunity for inclusive student recruitment to create opportunities for new researchers, sometimes with non-traditional backgrounds. Urban research demands diverse research teams to solve problems in an environment with many users and stakeholders. My research program has a long-standing record in equity, diversity, and inclusion and we aim to improve upon that record in the next phase. Impact.Cities are struggling to prepare their urban forests for climate change and require the knowledge and tools they need to protect and create the healthy below-ground systems essential to supporting these forests.