Human and biophysical legacies shape contemporary urban forests: A literature synthesis

Abstract Understanding how urban forestsdeveloped their current patterns of tree canopycover, species composition, and diversity requires an appreciation of historical legacy effects. However, analyses of current urban forestcharacteristics are often limited to contemporary socioeconomic factors, overlooking the role of history. The institutions, human communities, and biophysicalconditions of cities change over time, creating layers of legacies on the landscape, shifting urban foreststhrough complex interactive processes and feedbacks. Urban green spaces and planted trees can persist long after their establishment, meaning that today’s mature canopy reflects conditions and decisions from many years prior. In this synthesis article, we discuss some of the major historical human and biophysicaldrivers and associated legacy effects expressed in present urban forestpatterns, highlighting examples in the United States and Canada. The bioregionalcontext – native biome, climate, topography, initial vegetation, and pre-urbanization land use – represents the initial conditions in which a city established and grew, and this context influences how legacy effects unfold. Human drivers of legacy effects can reflect specific historical periods: colonial histories related to the symbolism of certain species, and the urban parks and civic beautificationmovements. Other human drivers include phenomena that cut across time periods such as neighborhood urban form and socioeconomic change. Biophysicallegacy effects include the consequences of past disturbances such as extreme weatherevents and pest and disease outbreaks. Urban tree professionals play a major role in many legacy effects by mediating the interactions and feedbacks between biophysicaland human drivers. We emphasize the importance of historical perspectives to understand past drivers that have produced current urban forestpatterns, and call for interdisciplinary and mixed methods research to unpack the mechanisms of long-term urban forestchange at intra- and inter-city scales.