Poster: From twigs to trees: Reforesting parklands and vacant lots to support climate resilience and biodiversity in a legacy city

Urban forests provide a variety of opportunities to beautify cities as well as mitigate the harmful impacts of urban heat islands, excess stormwater runoff, climate change, and atmospheric pollution. Throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States, legacy cities contain hundreds to thousands of parks and vacant land parcels which offer opportunities to expand urban forests. These greenspaces are regularly mown, keeping them free of late-successional woody vegetation such as shrubs and trees and greatly reducing a number of the ecological services they could provide to the frequently low-income communities surrounding them. We established the Twigs to Trees Program consisting of a network mixed-species tree plantings in Dayton, Ohio across a mix of vacant lands and parklands and evaluated tree establishment success, species performance, and associated arthropod communities at the site level, with proximity to impervious surfaces being considered as a potential influence on tree establishment. Temperature and relative humidity were also recorded at each site to quantify the effects of urban heat islands and microclimate on trees and arthropods. Over time, our results will elucidate the value of reforestation efforts in legacy cities to provide essential ecosystem services, conserve floral and faunal biodiversity, and generate resilience to climate change and urban heat.