Selecting Trees for the Future
Humanity faces a triple crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing pollution. Urban trees can help counteract these challenges by providing critical ecosystem services, storing carbon, purifying air, regulating temperatures, and supporting biodiversity. However, cities present increasingly harsh environments for trees, including heat stress, drought, and pollution. Some species also release allergenic pollen, creating public health risks. As urban populations grow, particularly in Sweden and Northern Europe, tree selection must balance ecological function, climate resilience, and health outcomes. This project will co-develop an interactive tool for selecting tree species suitable for urban environments in Northern Europe. The tool will synthesise research on tree stress tolerance, allergenicity, biodiversity support, air quality improvement potential, and practical planning needs. It will be developed and tested with practitioners in the City of Gothenburg and adapted for use in other cities. By supporting evidence-based decisions, the project contributes to resilient, healthy, and biodiverse urban landscapes.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Societal Challenge & Background
Cities face escalating pressures from climate change, biodiversity loss, declining public health, and rapid urbanisation, while trees offer a proven, multifunctional response through cooling, stormwater regulation, pollution mitigation, carbon storage, and psychological benefits. Despite this, urban trees often struggle in harsh conditions and are planted using a narrow range of species, with limited integration of scientific knowledge and few tools to balance trade-offs between ecological function, climate resilience, and health outcomes; this project addresses these gaps by co-developing a transdisciplinary decision-support tool for urban tree selection.
Key Challenges Addressed
The project targets climate adaptation by promoting climate‑smart species capable of thriving under increased heat, drought, and flooding; biodiversity loss by encouraging greater species diversity to enhance ecological resilience and support urban wildlife; and public health by prioritising tree species that improve air quality while minimising allergenic risks. It also tackles governance challenges by fostering collaboration between researchers, planners, and practitioners, integrating biodiversity, health, and climate considerations into holistic, science‑informed urban resilience strategies.
OVERVIEW & AIMS
The overall aim of the project is to provide practitioners such as urban planners, landscape architects, arborists, property managers, and environmental strategists with a science‑based and practical tool for selecting tree species suited to current and future urban environments in Northern Europe. By compiling interdisciplinary research and testing it together with stakeholders, the project aims to produce a digital, user‑friendly tool that supports sustainable city planning and public health by helping practitioners identify tree species that are resilient to urban stressors such as heat, drought, and flooding, account for biodiversity support while minimising health risks related to allergenic pollen, support equitable and evidence‑based urban greening strategies that benefit residents’ wellbeing, air quality, and access to nature, and apply a One Health approach that integrates ecological, environmental, and human health into land‑use planning. The project addresses specific needs within the public sector, particularly in municipalities such as Gothenburg that are committed to expanding green infrastructure but currently lack integrative decision tools. It also serves the wider urban development and horticultural sectors by delivering guidelines applicable across cities in Sweden and Northern Europe, and by involving end users in co‑design from the outset, the tool will be directly relevant and immediately usable within existing professional workflows.
FUNDING
The project is led by the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre (GGBC) at the Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg. The project, titled "SamBio: Collaboration for Biodiversity - Knowledge, Emotion, Action," is funded from 2025-2027 by Formas.