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.
