UBD Policy Urban Forests Data

This dataset provides data on three climate change impact metrics: exposure, safety margin and risk, for 164 global cities and 3,016 tree and shrub plant species. These metrics were calculated for all five climate variables (mean annual temperature, MAT; maximum temperature of the warmest month, MTWM; minimum temperature of the coldest month, MTCM; annual precipitation, AP; precipitation of the driest quarter, PDQ), three time periods (baseline and future (2050 and 2070) and two RCPs (4.5 and 6.0).
Exposure (E) is the degree to which a city is exposed to climatic change and is a measure of how much the climate is projected to change (for example, warmer or drier) between current and future time periods in a given location.
The safety margin (S) describes a species’ sensitivity to climate change and indicates its potential tolerance to changing climate conditions that may exceed either of the species’ upper or lower climatic limits within a given city.
The risk (R) refers to the potential for adverse consequences on biological systems and is calculated as the difference between the city’s extrinsic exposure to future climate change and the species’ intrinsic safety margin.
More details can be found in: Esperon-Rodriguez, M., Tjoelker, M.G., Lenoir, J. et al. Climate change increases global risk to urban forests. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 950–955 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01465-8