AIPH

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Organization
  • Name: Audrey
  • Surname: Timm
  • Organisation Name: AIPH
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: other
  • City: Chilton
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Website: https://aiph.org/
  • Social: http://AIPHglobal
  • Description: AIPH is the world's champion for the power of plants. We represent the global ornamental horticulture industry. Our Green City programme aims to increase the quality as well as the quantity of urban greening. We use knowledge exchange, advocacy and networking to nurture a strategic shift in city form and function.
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Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

Click here to discover the whole Alliance

Joanna Stubbs

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Individual
  • Name: Joanna
  • Surname: Stubbs
  • Organisation Name: University of Melbourne
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: forestry and arboriculture
  • City: Melbourne
  • Country: Australia
  • Social: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joanna-stubbs
  • Description: Research into Urban Forestry and assessing vulnerability of species of urban forests in a changing climate
[ninja_form id=5]

Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

Click here to discover the whole Alliance

Jessica Felappi

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Individual
  • Name: Jessica
  • Surname: Felappi
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: urban planning and landscape architecture
  • City: Bonn
  • Country: Germany
  • Description: As a PhD candidate working on urban green spaces benefits to health and wildlife, I would like to get to know stakeholders in this field to share knowledge, ideas, and perhaps build collaborations.
[ninja_form id=5]

Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

Click here to discover the whole Alliance

Educating the future urban foresters

City of Trees - An inspirational package for pre-teens on the benefits of Urban Forests and urban trees

Cities worldwide are facing environmental problems and commit towards a more sustainable development. To achieve this, we have to change the way we organise our societies. Education is a prerequisite for this change. Today, helping students to recognise the importance of trees in our immediate living sphere is of utmost importance. This is why the CLEARING HOUSE research project decided not only to generate new knowledge on Urban Forests and urban trees, but also to share it with children aged between 10 and 14 years and their teachers. In this regard, the project developed the City of Trees inspirational package, which explains the importance of urban trees and forests and why we have to take care of them, introducing the concept of ecosystem services and illustrating come examples in urban areas. In addition, the package explains how trees act as guardians of the pupils’ health, and nudges students and their teachers to work on greening their school yards.

“The final aim of the CLEARING HOUSE inspirational package is to inspire pre-teens to notice, value and protect the urban trees and forests now and in the future for the health of our planet.”

A second important aspect in the package is working around nature connectedness. Nowadays, research has shown that many children have lost the connection with nature, particularly children living in urban areas. The declining nature connectedness has a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of youth. Working on improving the relationship between pupils and urban nature has a multitude of positive impacts. Moreover, CLEARING HOUSE focused also on environmental and climate anxiety. Environmental anxiety refers to a difficult feeling that is to a large extent due to environmental problems and threats, in particular climate change in particular (for climate anxiety). Some people are so worried about the state of nature, forests and the environment, that they become paralysed and feel that they lack of capacity to take action. It is important to recognise these feelings. The inspirational package gives ideas on how to work with the feelings of environmental and climate anxiety.

The package is structured along the 5 pathways to nature connectedness:

  1. Meaning – nature bringing meaning to our live, e.g. the first blossoming of the cherry tree in the street of the sunset at the beach
  2. Compassion – caring and taking action for nature, e.g. collecting trash in the forest
  3. Senses – turning to nature through the senses, e.g. listening to the bird songs, enjoying the scents of the tree leaves in the autumn
  4. Emotion – feeling alive through the emotions and feelings nature brings, e.g. experiencing a thunder storm
  5. Beauty – noticing nature’s beauty, e.g. enjoying a breathtaking forest.

Every lesson and activity include suggestions on how to reflect with the students on these pathways.

Cities, countries, schools, curricula, teachers, and pupils differ, so the 10 chapters in the package are designed in a very flexible way to allow its adaptation to different conditions. The material is developed across subject lines: besides environmental education or biology, the package can also be used in mathematics, language, art or physical activity.

The inspirational package is available in English, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin) and Italian, and more translations are coming. It contains a workbook, a background document for teachers’ manual and an inspirational booklet for pupils.

Author:

Rik De Vreese (Urban Forestry Team Leader at the Resilience Programme with the European Forest Institute). 

The inspirational package has been developed by BOS+ in collaboration with EFI, with support of the CLEARING HOUSE partners.

The CLEARING HOUSE project has received funding from the European H2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Grant Agreement n° 821242. 

Mauro Masiero

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Individual
  • Name: Mauro
  • Surname: Masiero
  • Organisation Name: Dip. TESAF - University of Padova
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: forestry and arboriculture
  • City: Padova
  • Country: Italy
  • Website: https://www.tesaf.unipd.it/en/mauro-masiero
  • Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mauromasiero/
  • Description: As a researcher in forest policy and economics I am interested in existing research and practical initiatives in the field of nature-based solutions for greening urban areas. In particular I'm interested in the identification and assessment - in both biophysical and economic terms - of benefits generated by these solutions in order to identify possible mechanisms for their effective implementation.
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Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

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Urban Forests and Green Areas as Nature-Based Solutions for Brownfield Redevelopment: A Case Study from Brescia Municipal Area (Italy)

Publication from the AllianceAuthor: Masiero, M., Biasin, A., Amato, G., Malaggi, F., Pettenella, D., Nastasio, P., Anelli, S.
Year of publication: 2022

Urban areas are experiencing major changes and facing significant sustainability challenges. Many cities are undergoing a transition towards a post-industrial phase and need to consider the regeneration of brownfield sites. Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) are increasingly considered as tools for supporting this transition and promoting sustainable development by delivering multiple ecosystem services (ESs). Although the potential of NBSs as a cost-effective enabler of urban sustainability has been recognized, their implementation faces numerous barriers. The effective assessment of benefits delivered by urban NBSs is considered by existing literature as one of them. In order to contribute to filling this knowledge gap, we analyzed two alternative NBS-based intervention scenarios—i.e., (1) an urban forest and (2) meadows with sparse trees—for the redevelopment of an urban brownfield area within the municipality of Brescia (Northern Italy). Nine ESs were assessed both in biophysical and economic terms via a combination of modeling (InVEST, i-Tree and ESTIMAP) and traditional estimation methods. The results show that both scenarios improve ES stock and flow compared to the baseline, ensuring annual flows ranging between 140,000 and 360,000 EUR/year. Scenario 1 shows higher values when single ESs are considered, while scenario 2 shows higher total values, as it also accounts for the phytoremediation capacity that is not considered under the first scenario. All in all, regulating ESs represent the bulk of estimated ESs, thus highlighting the potential of proposed NBSs for improving urban resilience. The ES assessment and valuation exercise presented within this paper is an example of how research and practice can be integrated to inform urban management activities, and provide inputs for future decision making and planning regarding urban developments.
Read more

Uforest at The Nature of Cities Festival 2022

From the 29th to the 31st of March, join The Nature of Cities Festival!

The Nature of Cities (TNOC) is an international platform for transdisciplinary dialogue and urban solutions. The platform facilitates the sharing of diverse, transformative ideas about cities as ecosystems of people, nature, and infrastructure. TNOC produces publicly available programs, events, knowledge, and publication to promote the green transition of urban centres.

One of the most important events is certainly The Nature of Cities Festival, which this year will take place from the 29th to the 31st of March.

The Festival is the world’s first and only cities festival with a truly global and transdisciplinary nature. This event is experimental and very interactive, with most of the sessions being participatory. The aim is to enhance new ways of thinking and imagining cities and to seed ideas to develop cities that are better both for humans and for nature.

This is an online event with programming across all regional time zones and in multiple languages. Indeed, one of the core principles of the festival is to foster inclusivity and lower barriers for participation.
The programme of the festival is transdisciplinary and innovative and has different types of sessions, such as interactive workshops, talk, online fieldtrips, art performances, and working groups. A great part of the event is crowd sourced, meaning that sessions are freely proposed by projects, experts, organisations, and initiatives involved in urbanism and other urban-related topics.

Uforest will participate to the TNOC Festival with a seed session focusing on learning and training in urban forestry. On this occasion, Uforest will present its training and learning opportunities, as well as its reports and case studies, with the aim to illustrate best practices and share knowledge in urban forestry. The Uforest seed session will take place on the 30th of March, at 11am.

Learn more about the TNOC Festival and register here.

Did you miss Uforest’s seed session? Read the event brief!

New opportunity: the Green4C Business Innovation Challenge

Are you interested in the ways nature can promote health, wellbeing, and social inclusion? Would you like to start something of your own?

Green4C is a three-years Knowledge Alliance project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, which aims at promoting nature-based solutions for health, wellbeing, and social inclusion. The Alliance brings together universities, businesses, and organisations working in different fields, from forestry to healthcare. Thanks to the different backgrounds and expertise, the project delivers interdisciplinary learning opportunities and material in Green Care, such as reports, case studies, an e-learning course and more.

The term Green Care refers to all those activities that promote health and wellbeing through the contact with nature and its elements. There are many different Green Care activities and they can address a wide variety of issues, from mental health disorders to obesity and social isolation. These activities are usually supervised or delivered by trained and qualified practitioners.
While generally Green Care practices take place in rural settings, such as woodlands and forests, they can be conducted in cities too. Urban parks, gardens, and other types of green infrastructures can provide a good site for Green Care initiatives.

Recognising the central role of nature in the development of a greener and healthier future, Green4C seeks to promote Green Care as an efficient tool to address environmental, health, and social concerns.
Therefore, to stimulate the creation of innovative Green Care initiatives, the project has launched an exciting new opportunity: the Green4C Business Innovation Challenge (BIC). The BIC is a competition open to anyone with innovative business or project ideas in Green Care. Participants will compete by presenting their idea to promote the health and social benefits of nature. 

Winners of the BIC will gain access to the Green4C Summer School. The Summer School is a three-weeks high specialisation course in Green Care taking place in Italy, at the University of Padova. During the School, top European experts will share knowledge and best practices to help students implement their ideas.

The deadline to participate in the BIC is on the 1st of May 2022.

Learn all the details and register here.

Charles Cannon

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Individual
  • Name: Charles
  • Surname: Cannon
  • Organisation Name: The Morton Arboretum
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: forestry and arboriculture
  • City: Lisle
  • Country: United States
  • Website: http://mortonarb.org
  • Description: Sounds like a great group to be part of! I wholeheartedly support these ideas and efforts.
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Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

Click here to discover the whole Alliance

Simon Muwafu

is part of the Uforest Alliance connecting individuals and organizations in Uforest activities!

  • Description

  • Join As: Individual
  • Name: Simon
  • Surname: Muwafu
  • Organisation Name: Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon GmbH
  • Main Sector: private
  • Specific Sector: urban planning and landscape architecture
  • City: Hamburg
  • Country: Germany
  • Description: I am a PhD researcher with a focus on integration of systems modelling approaches in designing Nature Based Solutions adaptation strategies for urban ecological systems. I hope to use the project to network and exchange with colleagues and subject matter experts from with the field.
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Uforest can only be held responsible for responding to questions and applications sent directly to the email info@uforest.eu and through the Alliance Map form. The project seeks to foster communication and exchange of knowledge between network members however it is not responsible for such interactions, or lack thereof. Please report any suspected misconduct to info@uforest.eu.

Click here to discover the whole Alliance