The engagement of citizen in the management of urban forests: the LIFE URBANGREEN experience in Krakow

How do we make the ecosystem services of urban green areas and their benefits against climate change visible in real-time and even more effective? The cities of Krakow (Poland) and Rimini (Italy), in conjunction with their technological and scientific partners, addressed these topics in the EU-project LIFE URBANGREEN (LIFE17 CCA/IT/000079). This project developed innovative tools to assist the green area managers in their daily work and tested the effectiveness of these tools in the parks and streets of Rimini and Kraków.To ensure a broad understanding of the LIFE URBANGREEN project, along with the promotion of the importance and values of urban greenery, communication activities played a crucial role in engaging citizens to these topics. The most relevant communication activities the project carried out were: -creating awareness on urban forests among the target audience; -calculating and understanding the value of ecosystem services provided by trees and green areas for the two analysed cities;-communicating the environmental benefits and the overall importance of trees to the citizen.An important communication channel developed within the project is the web portal “Trees of Krakow and their benefits” (https://krakow.lifeurbangreen.eu). Here citizens can consult the main green areas of the city and retrieve information including the benefits of these areas in terms of Carbon assimilation, sequestration and storage, air amelioration and ambient air cooling. The data displayed on the portal are calculated in real-time, based on the spatial database of trees of Krakow trees, daily updated during maintenance activities.The data on ecosystem services are based on new algorithms developed during the LIFE URBANGREEEN Project, which consider the tree species, their age and size, the current weather condition and transpiration coefficients developed by the scientific component of the project with measurements on hundreds of trees over a period of three years.Citizens showed great interest in the project activities. The Public Portals of Krakow and Rimini are registering high consultation numbers, also one year after the end of the LIFE URBANGREEN project. Since the environmental benefits served by urban trees are calculated dynamically and updated every night, the values represented reflect the actual situation of the two cities.