Urban Tree Selection and Management Strategies for Climate Adaptation

Urban areas have experienced rapid urbanization, which involves unplanned and uncontrolled growth and development, demographic expansion, and other anthropogenic activities. Rapid urbanization has occurred in the cities, resulting in unplanned and uncontrollably growing populations, demographic shifts, and other human activities. For this reason, climate change's potential biotic and abiotic effects may impact urban forests and trees. Tree species that exhibit strong stress tolerance and high local climatic adaptability should be discovered and chosen to increase urban forests’ resilience to climate change's effects. Urban forests and trees are directly or indirectly impacted by climate phenomena in urban environments, such as frost, cold, heat waves, drought, thunderstorms, waterlogging, soil salinization, pests, and disease. An evaluation framework can be proposed and used to evaluate the climate change adaptation of about 70 urban tree species using a method that combines quantitative data and qualitative description to choose urban tree species in the context of climate change. The most important prevalent tree species viz. Azadirachtaindica, Terminaliacatappa, Peltophorumpterocarpum, Delonixregia, Annonasquamosa, Acacia auriculiformis, Prosopisjuliflora, Tamarindusindica, Tecomastans, Leucaenaleucocephala, Borassusflabellifer, Sennasiamea, Delonixregia and Eucalyptus tereticornis, etc., in urban areas used to deal with the impact of climate change in urban areas. In light of the effects of climate change, warm subtropical, and highly tolerant species make the best selections for urban tree species. The need to create new techniques, such as using digital geotechnology for urban tree care, is becoming more pressing due to the growing demand to conserve trees and the limited availability of resources (workforce and water). Developing an urban forest is a long-term project that needs ongoing support and dedication from urban communities to achieve the full availability and equitable distribution of numerous advantages. It is proposed that following guidelines can help make tree-planting projects more successful. The following principles are adhered to: (1) provide basic knowledge of urban tree species; (2) facilitate community engagement on tree planting and maintenance; (3) focus more emphasis on tree canopy cover goals than planting quantity of trees; (4) focus on post-planting care and encouraging retention of existing trees; (5) increasing species diversity, through careful species selection to enhance resilience of urban trees.