Select frameworks within the field of urban forestry and urban greening. Note that this is not an exhaustive list of frameworks proposed or used in the urban forestry and urban greening field, just those that were influential and useful in the development of the comprehensive framework proposed in this paper. A collection of the visuals (tables and figures) containing the details of these frameworks excerpted from the original papers along with annotations for how the specific components of each framework aligns with the comprehensive UFSES framework presented in this paper is available by request from the author. The “Cit. key” lettering system in the first column of this table gives each framework a shorthand name and appears in the “Other UF framework” column of Table 3 through Table 9 in this paper. Asterisks next to the framework name indicate which informed the evolution of the UFSES perspective and which influenced earlier versions of the UFSES framework. UFSES (urban forest social-ecological system); Cit. key (citation key); UF (urban forest); SES (social-ecological system).
| Cit. key | Framework name | Source(s) | Citationsa | Description (major system components in italics) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUS | Model of urban forest sustainability* | Clark et al. (1997) Kenney et al. (2011) | 577 total (388) (189) | Sustainable urban forests require 3 relatively separate, but equally important, components: Vegetation resource, Community framework, and Resource management approach. There are 20 specific criteria across all of these components. (Appendix B describes this widely applied framework.) |
| INST | Institutional analysis for urban forest ecosystems** | Mincey et al. (2013) | 121 | In examining a decision-making situation or process, 7 major types of rules (in parentheses) are linked to the following parts of an “action situation”: Participants (Boundary rules), Positions (Position rules), Actors (Choice rules), Information (Information rules), Control (Aggregation rules), Costs and Benefits (Payoff rules), and Potential outcomes (Scope rules). |
| GOV1 | Urban forest governance framework** | Lawrence et al. (2013) | 191 | Urban forest governance can be qualitatively explored through 5 groups of variables: Context, Institutional framework, Actors and coalitions, Resources, and Processes. |
| SES1+ | UFSESs perspective | Vogt and Fischer (2014) Vogt et al. (2015c) | 143 total (32) (111) | Urban forest outcomes are produced by the Interactions of 4 major components: Community, Biophysical environment, Tree, and Institutions & management. A set of specific variables can be operationalized for each of these major components. |
| MAIN | Urban forest maintenance regimes** | Vogt et al. (2015b) | 173 | A maintenance regime can be described by 6 kinds of information/decisions: Type, Who, Intensity, Frequency, Duration, and Extent. The given Costs of one or more maintenance regime can be evaluated against desired outcomes or financial constraints. |
| CC | Urban forestry climate change response framework** | Brandt et al. (2016)b | 114 | A 3-part approach, consisting of Regional assessment of impacts and tree species vulnerability, Local vulnerability assessments, and culminating in Adaptation projects and planning, enables a community to plan and manage their urban forest in the face of climate change. |
| VULN | Urban forest ecosystem vulnerability** | Steenberg et al. (2017) | 73 | Exposure (described by Components, stressors and disturbances and the Characteristics thereof) influences the Sensitivity of the urban forest (which is a combination of Urban forest structure and Urban forest function), which in turn impacts the Potential impacts and Adaptive capacity of the system. |
| LEG | Human and biophysical legacy effects in urban forests** | Roman et al. (2018) | 191 | Biophysical legacies (inclusive of Ecological disturbance) and Human legacies (including Legacies of historical periods and Neighborhood and community change) influence Urban forest spatio-temporal dynamics. |
| MOS | Mosaic governance of urban green infrastructure*** | Buijs et al. (2016) Buijs et al. (2019) | 484 total (193) (291) | Four “interventions and processes” (Resources, Rules of the game, Discourses, and Actors) connect Local government planning to Interventions in urban greenspaces, which happen through Scaling out and Scaling up processes. |
| MORT | Urban tree mortality framework** | Hilbert et al. (2019) | 104 | Urban tree Mortality outcomes are influenced by 3 major levels of factors (Predisposing, Inciting, and Contributing) and at each level, factors in the Human and Biophysical parts of the system are considered. |
| SES2+ | Comprehensive framework for urban forests as SESs | Vogt (2020b) | 28 | Biophysical factors (Characteristics of the trees in the urban forest and the Surrounding growing environment) and Human factors (Institutions and Characteristics of Human Actors) interact with one another and influence Urban forest outcomes. These 5 core factors are also influenced by the Broader Ecosystem Context and Dynamics (especially Ecological disturbances and Ecological “rules”) and the Larger Social, Economic, and Political Context & Dynamics. |
| GOV2 | Urban forest governance framework*** | Ordóñez et al. (2020)c | 67 | There are 4 dimensions of urban forest governance processes (Stakeholders, Rules of the Game, Resources, and Discourse), and each dimensions includes numerous themes that can be qualitatively examined. |
| NBS | Conceptual model of the SES of nature-based solutions in urban environments*** | Tzoulas et al. (2021) | 40 | In this complex framework, the SES of a site comprises 12 external systems that “function slowly at large scales” and 12 internal systems that “function fast at small, spatial, and temporal scales”. The 12 pairs of internal and external systems are coupled. Social pairs (external systems listed first) include, e.g., Demographic-People and Cultural-Lifestyles; Ecological pairs include, e.g., Biodiversity-Fauna and flora, Land change and N and P flows - Soil and Climate-Weather. These site-level systems pairings are then influenced by the planning and implementation of nature-based solutions along 8 stages of planning, each paired with a design element. |
| BEY | Beyond ‘trees are good’ evaluation matrix*** | Roman et al. (2021b) | 165 | Trees and urban forests yield more than just benefits. Instead, a combination of Ecosystem services, Ecosystem disservices, and Management costs can yield Positive synergies, Tradeoffs, and Negative synergies for people in the urban forest. |
| PAT | Conceptual model of urban forest patches*** | Johnson et al. (2021) | 45 | Six core factors within “co-produced urban forest assemblages” interact: People, Multilevel governance network, Regional economies, Forest patch condition, Local biophysical factors, and Landscape configuration. These are influenced by Macro-scale social drivers and Macro-scale biophysical drivers, and iterations of these interactions through time yield Legacies that also influence patch dynamics. |
↵a Number of citations according to Google Scholar as of 2024 March 11.
↵b See also the report covering the climate change response framework for forests that includes a section on urban forests (Swanston et al. 2016), as well as the companion report that examines urban forests, climate change, and human health (Janowiak et al. 2021).
↵c The GOV2 framework of Ordóñez et al. (2020) is based in part on the GOV1 framework of Lawrence et al. (2013).
↵+ Indicates earlier versions of the UFSES framework presented in this paper.
↵* Influenced version 1 (SES1)(Vogt and Fischer 2014; Vogt et al. 2015d).
↵** Influenced version 2 (SES2)(Vogt 2020b).
↵*** Newly influential for the comprehensive UFSES framework.