Скачать или смотреть Urban Tree Management for Storms: Perceptions about Processes and... TREE Fund May 6, 2025 Webinar

Urban Tree Management for Storms: Perceptions about Processes and Collaboration, and the Role of Urban Forestry Professionals on May 6, 2025 during the TREE Fund Webinar Series. Presented by Dr. Stephanie Cadaval and Dr. Mysha Clarke.

Urban trees provide important ecosystem services, but public perceptions and preferences about them may shift before, during or after impactful storms. Urban forestry professionals work to balance human safety, infrastructure integrity and ecosystem benefits while managing trees to reduce storm-related risks. Our mixed methods research finds that these professionals face challenges due to limited resources and can benefit from more proactive planning and tree management. Risk assessment is influenced by contextual experiences and professionals can define community vulnerability to storms based on a range of social or ecological factors. From interviews with urban forestry professionals in three case study cities, collaboration emerged as a potential solution to overcome some management challenges. Our quantitative findings show that more complex job needs and greater intrinsic motivation for working with trees and storms positively correlate with perceptions of collaboration. Finally, we applied the Protection Motivation Theory to understand how professionals' perceptions of threat and coping capacity shaped their willingness to engage in collaborative actions surrounding the management of community trees for storms.

Research was funded by TREE Fund through 2020 Bob Skiera Memorial Fund Building Bridges Initiative and John P. White Grant Program