Abstract
While many Australian cities have ambitious targets to increase tree-canopy cover, many municipal governments also spend millions of dollars removing urban trees every year.
While large, old trees can be hazardous and, hence, are often removed, these are precisely the type of trees that provide the most significant services, including shade and wildlife habitat.
This means that urban places where trees are removed can experience rapid loss, absence, and slow recovery in tree-related services.
While the negative effects of this on, for example, shade, are straight forward, today there is no clear understanding of the psychological and social effects of tree removal. This is because few studies, if any, focus on a before-after-control-impact experimental investigation of the impact of tree loss on psycho-social parameters.
Camilo presents preliminary results from a study carried out at selected treescapes in the City of Melbourne, and how psycho-social processes (i.e., attitudes, perceived benefits, well-being, nature connectedness, and walking activity) can change after trees are removed from these sites.
