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

背景。城市需要专业知识来指导基于自然的解决方案，以应对气候挑战。城市森林是这个以自然为基础的工具包的关键，但城市化大规模破坏了土壤，给树木带来了新的挑战。我的项目旨在通过关注两个关键领域：土壤有机碳（SOC）和水文学，揭示各种土地开发和城市场地工程背景下土壤与城市森林健康之间的联系。城市土壤具有多种功能：支撑建筑物和道路，调节城市水循环，为植被提供水和养分。这些角色经常处于冲突中，城市通过场地工程和土壤管理来管理这些冲突。我对有机碳的关注不仅源于它在温室气体排放中的关键作用，还源于它在土壤团聚体形成和土壤结构中的作用。这些土壤物理性质决定了水和根如何在土壤系统中移动，影响雨水缓解、植物可利用水、树木和基础设施的稳定性以及城市森林的健康。目标。我的项目将通过使用城市森林类型学来理解土壤模式，然后研究这些模式，为管理和政策提供信息，并将研究结果扩大到整个城市，从而在场地和区域尺度上理解这个复杂的行动者和活动网络。人们对城市树木的模式了解甚少，但它可以为城市管理如何影响树木和土壤提供强有力的新见解。方法。这项工作有三个组成部分：1)利用激光雷达和聚类分析开发的类型学框架，识别小规模城市森林类型，并允许将其相互作用特征作为一个系统进行研究；2)通过设置配备无线传感器的土壤和树木监测程序，分析气候变化下工程土壤支持树木的性能；3)利用系统土壤取样进行土壤有机碳动态和水文调查，并将这些数据与类型学模式联系起来。因此，我们将确定城市森林气候适应能力的关键因素和城市可以使用的土壤管理策略。培训。我正在培训新一代的多学科专业人员，他们能够在不断变化的城市环境中收集高质量的数据。城市林业是一门新兴学科，提供了一个理想的机会，为包容性的学生招募创造新的研究人员的机会，有时具有非传统的背景。城市研究需要多样化的研究团队来解决用户和利益相关者众多的环境问题。我的研究项目在公平、多样性和包容性方面有着长期的记录，我们的目标是在下一阶段改进这一记录。的影响。城市正在努力使其城市森林做好应对气候变化的准备，并需要所需的知识和工具来保护和创建健康的地下系统，这对支持这些森林至关重要。

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.