FUSEE - Urban Forests and Ecosystem Services: Evaluating to Manage

This programme is jointly supported by the BIOSEFAIR and BETTER metaprogrammes. 

Objectives

The FAO defines urban forests as ‘a network or system including all wooded areas, groups of trees and individual trees located in urban and peri-urban areas, including forests, street trees, trees in parks and gardens, and trees in abandoned areas’.

The balance between the ecosystem services and disservices associated with it is determined by the identity, specific, architectural and functional diversity, abundance and distribution of trees in urban areas. However, the characteristics of the urban forest are themselves the result of biological, sociological, economic and regulatory constraints. The urban forest reflects both the attitudes of individuals towards trees and the evolution of urban policies.

The FUSEE project — Urban Forest and Ecosystem Services: Evaluate to Manage — has two objectives: 
 

• Build a common conceptual framework for assessing the ecosystem services provided by the urban forest as a whole, fully integrating its biological, ecological, social, cultural, economic and political dimensions; 

• Develop tools to assess the services and benefits that trees in cities actually, potentially or supposedly provide.

Approaches
 

The project is being rolled out in five successive phases aimed at structuring an interdisciplinary scientific community around the assessment of ecosystem services provided by the urban forest. 

The initiation phase (January 2026) establishes a common framework for analysis and develops a shared glossary. 

The acculturation phase (April 2026 – March 2027) will organise a series of bimonthly webinars bringing together scientists and socio-economic actors to explore different ecosystem services and discuss conceptual and methodological barriers. 

The co-construction phase (june 2027) brings together researchers, practitioners and citizens to prioritise their concerns regarding ecosystem services and develop a questionnaire for professionals and residents, prior to the next phase. 

The co-design phase (october 2027) takes the form of a writing workshop aimed at defining priority issues, research methods and partnerships, as well as the variables needed to construct spatialisable indicators of ecosystem services.

Participants

Structures INRAE

UMR BIOGECO - Biodiversité gènes et communautés

UR ETTIS - Environnement, Territoires en Transité, Infrastructures, Sociétés

UMR ISPA - Interactions Sol Plante Atmosphère

UMR ECOSYS - Écologie fonctionnelle et Écotoxicologie des Agroécosystèmes

UMR LISIS - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés

UMR TETIS - Territoires Environnement Télédétection et Information Spatiale

Partenaires externes

Université Lyon 3 - Faculté des Humanités, Lettres et Sociétés

Centre Emile Durkheim, URFIST de Bordeaux

CRAUM - chaire de recherche sur l'arbre urbain et son milieu - Université Laval (Québec)