Urban forests : towards adaptation to global changes

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The City of Montreal (Service des Grands Parcs, Rosemont-La-Patite-Patrie borough, Service de l'eau), Jakarto, Rousseau-Lefebvre, QuébecVert and Soverdi have identified four main research objectives contributing to the overarching goal of adapting urban forests to global change: 1) increasing capacity to survey all urban trees; 2) understanding why trees die in the urban environment, and how they cope with stress and stormwater control measures; 3) modelling forest response and drafting adaptation strategies to global change threats; and 4) mobilize knowledge to concerned stakeholders. To achieve this ambitious goal, we bring together partners and collaborators with relevant know-how and capacity to transfer knowledge to stakeholders, from and for the municipal, private, and non-for-profit sectors.Most cities do not have a complete tree inventory, and lack information on private trees, despite that they represent half the total trees in a city. We will develop novel ways to increase the capacity of Canadian cities to survey their urban forests, an important step towards adaptation.Little is known of urban tree survival and how they adapt to stress, including in green infrastructures. Urban rainwater management has become very important, but in Canadian cities, these will not only drain water but also de-icing salts. To this day, sound data on urban trees' tolerance to salt and to cyclic flooding and drought events are lacking. We have designed ambitious research projects to answer these fundamental questions.Finally, while major Canadian cities have plans to add thousands of trees, few if any have measurable objectives in terms of desired benefits and a plan to face challenges. Without better guidelines, these noble and expensive efforts may fall short of desired outcomes. This Alliance project will provide working answers to these challenges, while developing novel techniques to sample and track change, as well as needed knowledge towards adaptation. A major strength of our project is our capacity to mobilize this knowledge through our partners to stakeholders and decision makers.