John Liu planted a seed that blossomed into a movement. The documentary filmmaker, environmental educator and father of the Ecosystems Restoration Camps movement joined us for the fourth Boulder Forum on Economy, Climate and Community panel.

UDI Director Brett KenCairn provides a briefing on the emerging recognition of the critical role urban forestry will play in addressing climate change and an update on local, regional and national initiatives to significantly expand funding and action in urban forestry. He also provides a brief overview of the recently released “Front Range Urban Forestry Expansion Strategy” calling for a three-year, $100M investment in urban forestry across the Front Range.

UDI has compiled an extensive bibliography of close to 50 citations of both research and media coverage of urban forestry-related topics. This document includes links to the sources for each citation.

With support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, UDI spent six months working with close to 40 local organizations and jurisdictions in the Colorado Front Range/Denver-Metro area to formulate a detailed, equity-centered urban forestry scale-up strategy. This report provides extensive details on the strategies developed through this broad coalition including equity-based workforce development, community-centered engagement strategies, forestry project scoping and scaling, and an applied urban forestry research approach. This document is meant to be a resource and reference to other metro areas and regions around the country and an indication of the scale of funding and resources needed to achieve transformative urban forestry actions.

UDI worked with six cities with leading urban forestry programs—Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver-Metro and San Francisco—to formulate “shovel ready” rapid urban forestry scale-up strategies designed to support equity-based community recovery and accelerate protection and enhancement of critical “green infrastructure” essential to managing urban heat extremes and other impacts of extreme weather associated with a changing climate. The portfolio provides a framework for other cities to explore similar scale-up strategies.

With support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, UDI spent six months working with close to 40 local organizations and jurisdictions in the Colorado Front Range/Denver-Metro area to formulate a detailed, equity-centered urban forestry scale-up strategy. This report provides extensive details on the strategies developed through this broad coalition including equity-based workforce development, community-centered engagement strategies, forestry project scoping and scaling, and an applied urban forestry research approach. This document is meant to be a resource and reference to other metro areas and regions around the country and an indication of the scale of funding and resources needed to achieve transformative urban forestry actions.