Abstract
The numerous benefits of urban trees and forests are being increasingly recognised globally but grossly under studied in the developing world. This paper reviewed the methodological approaches to urban trees and forests assessments in Africa in relation to the growing number of publications in the field between 2012 and 2017. It adopted a comprehensive search of online publications related to urban trees and forests in the Google Scholar, Springer, Science Direct, Scopus, IEEE, Tailor and Francis and African Journals databases. Number of publications increased steadily from 2 in 2012 to a cumulative total of 44 in 2017, most of which were however, from South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana with little contributions from Kenya and Rwanda. Although remote sensing may facilitate detailed studies of urban trees, most researchers used the traditional and time-consuming field surveys and to some extent, interview and questionnaire surveys. African cities are highly diverse in both native and exotic tree species but the exotic species dominate in many areas. Urban trees in Africa provide both tangible and intangible benefits which include provision of income, fruits, medicines, fuelwood and recreation opportunities. Others are micro-climate modification, erosion and desertification control, pollutants removal, spirituality and aesthetics. Advances in urban tree assessments such as the use of i-Tree Eco and i-Tree Streets, high resolution remote sensing images and LiDAR should be explored. Governmental and private organizations need to be more committed to urban trees research and management through enhanced funding. Keywords: Africa; Urbanization; Urban Trees; Urban Forests; Diversity; Remote Sensing DOI : 10.7176/JEES/9-9-05 Publication date :September 30 th 2019
Highlights
As the world populations increasingly become urban, cities need to adopt integrated urban planning and management which may include a nature-based approach that allows humans to access the various benefits of nature (Ostoić, Salbitano, Borelli, & Verlič, 2018), such as those provided by urban trees and forests (Fuwape & Onyekwelu, 2011)
Their roots could all be traced to urban forestry which emerged as a distinct field of study at the University of Toronto in 1965 (Randrup, Konijnendijk, Dobbertin, & Prüller, 2005) even though it was first mentioned in the United States in 1894 (Konijnendijk, Ricard, Kenney, & Randrup, 2006)
Background and Purpose a relatively new field of study (Nilsson, Konijnendijk, & Randrup, 2005), research in urban trees and urban forests in general has gone a long way in the developed countries and has covered a variety of topics ranging from composition, diversity and distribution (Avolio et al, 2015; Nock, Paquette, Follett, Nowak, & Messier, 2013; Sjöman, Östberg, & Bühler, 2012; Wang, Qin, & Hu, 2015), ecosystems services and disservices (Escobedo, Giannico, Jim, Sanesi, & Lafortezza, 2018; Luederitz et al, 2015), economic benefits (Song, Tan, Edwards, & Richards, 2018), biomass and carbon stock (Nowak et al, 2013; Raciti, Hutyra, & Newell, 2014) and vulnerability and invasiveness (Steenberg, Millward, Nowak, Robinson, & Ellis, 2017) among others
Summary
As the world populations increasingly become urban, cities need to adopt integrated urban planning and management (du Toit et al, 2018) which may include a nature-based approach that allows humans to access the various benefits of nature (Ostoić, Salbitano, Borelli, & Verlič, 2018), such as those provided by urban trees and forests (Fuwape & Onyekwelu, 2011). Background and Purpose a relatively new field of study (Nilsson, Konijnendijk, & Randrup, 2005), research in urban trees and urban forests in general has gone a long way in the developed countries and has covered a variety of topics ranging from composition, diversity and distribution (Avolio et al, 2015; Nock, Paquette, Follett, Nowak, & Messier, 2013; Sjöman, Östberg, & Bühler, 2012; Wang, Qin, & Hu, 2015), ecosystems services and disservices (Escobedo, Giannico, Jim, Sanesi, & Lafortezza, 2018; Luederitz et al, 2015), economic benefits (Song, Tan, Edwards, & Richards, 2018), biomass and carbon stock (Nowak et al, 2013; Raciti, Hutyra, & Newell, 2014) and vulnerability and invasiveness (Steenberg, Millward, Nowak, Robinson, & Ellis, 2017) among others Much of these studies were carried out mainly in North America and Europe (Escobedo et al, 2018; Kuruneri-Chitepo & Shackleton, 2011; Nielsen, van den Bosch, Maruthaveeran, & van den Bosch, 2014; Roy et al, 2012; Shackleton, 2012; Zhao et al, 2013) but there is a growing number of studies being conducted in Asia Our review found a total of 44 papers spanning the different aspects of urban trees and forests published between 2012 and 2017 in the continent (Table 1)
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