Urban Forests and Landscape Ecology

Urbanization has become a dominant driver of landscape transformation across the world, with cities representing centers of economic and socio-cultural development. Today, more than 4.2 billion people live in urban areas, which represent ~3 percent of the Earth’s land area. By 2050, it is predicted this number will increase to 6.6 billion people (~70% of the predicted global population) [1]. As the human population grows, cities around the globe will continue to expand, increasing the demand for food and services.

Within cities, urban forests provide multiple nature-based solutions as well as other environmental services and socio-economic benefits, which include, among others, heat mitigation, a reduction in air pollutants, the improvement of human health, and social integration [2,3]. Urban forests are also important for coping with psychological stress during events such as the COVID-19 pandemic [4]. Therefore, urban forests are a priority for basic and applied forest research because they are intimately connected with people’s physical, cultural, and economic well-being in the urban environment, and can also be important reservoirs of biodiversity.

Therefore, landscape ecology provides a critical perspective for understanding and managing urban forests. Urban forests exist within the matrix of socio-ecological systems and in spatially complex configurations, which affect key processes, including growth, reproduction, and interactions with animal mutualists and commensals, which also link urban forests to surrounding non-forest habitats. Therefore, urbanization’s direct impacts on forests are modified (and often compounded) by concurrent, indirect impacts via changes to forests’ spatial configurations and surrounding habitats.

To promote a better understanding of urban forests and landscape ecology, this Special Issue in “Urban Forests and Landscape Ecology” compiled research set in urban forests and focused on some spatially explicit processes. Studies presented in this Special Issue are highly interdisciplinary and use a wide range of research approaches. The aim is to increase the number of studies based on rapidly urbanizing areas and increase the knowledge regarding urban forests and landscape ecology.