Urban Forestry Research in Europe-An Overview

A comprehensive European overview of recent and ongoing research in Europe has been carried out within the framework of COST Action E12 ’Urban Forests and Trees’, a pan-European research network. This paper presents some of the main findings of a comparative analysis of 20 individual country reports. The analysis shows that research on urban forests and urban trees in Europe has a wide scope and is rather fragmented and uncoordinated. Universities and state research institutes, mostly with a forestry or horticultural background, dominate the research. Relevant research is primarily funded from state and municipal sources. Significant differences exist between countries with regards to the level of activity, research topics and institutions involved.