Native Trees as a Provider of Vital Urban Ecosystem Services in Urbanizing New Zealand: Status Quo, Challenges and Prospects

Jihwi Jang and Su-Young Woo
Additional contact information
Jihwi Jang: School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand
Su-Young Woo: Urban Environment and Plant Sciences Laboratory, Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: In New Zealand, over 87% of the population currently resides in cities. Urban trees can face a myriad of complex challenges including loss of green space, public health issues, and harm to the existence of urban dwellers and trees, along with domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions. Despite New Zealand being a biodiversity hotspot in terms of natural environments, there is a lack of knowledge about native tree species’ regulating service (i.e., tree development and eco-physiological responses to low air quality, GHG, rising air temperatures, and drought) and how they grow in built-up environments such as cities. Therefore, we argue for the value of these native species in terms of ecosystem services and insist that they need to be viewed in relation to how they will respond to urban abiotic extremes and climate change. We propose to diversify planted forests for several reasons: (1) to improve awareness of the benefits of diverse planted urban forests; (2) to foster native tree research in urban environments, finding new keystone species; and (3) to improve the evidence of urban ecosystem resilience based on New Zealand native trees’ regulating services. This article aims to re-evaluate our understanding of whether New Zealand’s native trees can deal with environmental stress conditions similarly to more commonly planted alien species.

Keywords: tree diversity; ecosystem resilience; native tree; urban environment; urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/92/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/92/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:1:p:92-:d:719378

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().