Since 2007, the global urban population has surpassed the rural population, and the number of citizens continues to rise. In Canada, 80% of the population lives in cites, and as urban development continues to increase and spread at alarming rates, what of the trees that are found there? The insects? The birds? And us, what of our health and wellbeing? It's in asking all these questions that postdocs, and doctoral and masters students from UQAM in Alain Paquette's lab, as well as from the University of Sherbrooke in Isabelle Laforest-Lapointe's lab decided to put in place a network of plots on the island of Montreal: the urban observatory. Since then, professors Tanya Handa (UQAM) and Carly Ziter (Concordia), and their students, have joined the urban observatory network.

By using the observatory of plots setup in 2021, this project aims to understand how private trees, and their associated ecosystem services, change along socioeconomic and urban gradients. To accomplish this, a vast forest inventory of public and private trees is underway at a 200m radius around each of the 25 plots (centered around pollen traps). Why is it so important to study public AND private trees? Current research on the urban forest has generally been limited to public trees due to data availability and access. However, this means that over 50% of urban trees are excluded from studies, leading to potentially biased results. Therefore, by also including private trees in our study we will have a more complete portrait of urban tree biodiversity and the ecosystem services they provide.