©2023 International Society of Arboriculture 200 Tabassum et al: A Plant Selection Tool for Changing Urban Climates climate data and do not incorporate extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and droughts. Yet, these events have already had, and will continue to have, negative consequences for urban plants (Tabassum et al. 2021a; Haase and Hellwig 2022). Further, our calculations of climate suitability for each period were based on median values across 10 climate scenarios, highlighting that there is uncertainty in the magnitude of future climate change. It is anticipated that the modelling input for the tool will be updated on a regular basis to ensure that the climate suitability information is current. Future iterations of the modelling output could be improved by incorporating occurrence records from urban plantings to improve modelling outcomes. Urban landscapes also contain a variety of micro- climates which could not be accounted for in our modelling approach. Thus, a plant may survive in a climatically unsuitable postcode if the microclimate (e.g., as controlled by aspect) is favourable. Similarly, plants may survive outside of their optimal climate conditions due to human-mediated actions such as supplemental watering (Yang 2009). On the other hand, species planted in a particularly warm microclimate (e.g., against the western wall of a dark coloured building) in an otherwise climatically suitable post- code may not survive. To account for microclimatic effects when selecting species for urban plantings, more information about urban-specific stressors would pro- vide additional functionality for Which Plant Where. For example, the woody species selection tool for urban spaces, Citree (Vogt et al. 2017), contains addi- tional filters for site characteristics such as soil depth, soil compaction, and waterlogging risk. It is antici- pated that future versions of Which Plant Where will include additional components such as soil volume requirements, locally indigenous information at post- code level and useful life expectancy information. Although there are over 2,500 entries in the tool, sub-species, cultivars, varieties, and hybrids could not be modelled, resulting in 27% (668 entries) of plants not having associated climate suitability infor- mation. Without climate suitability information, the plant selector tool is not able to recommend a plant. Consequently, they will only appear if users search directly for them or if they are accessed through the parent species pages. A recommendation from this work is that more data be collected and made avail- able on the performance of sub-species, cultivars, varieties, and hybrids, as they may perform very Where allows users to quantify various co-benefits that urban plantings can provide. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first plant selection tool in the world to utilise sophisticated species distribution mod- els for such a large variety of species. Limitations and Future Improvements for the Tool Which Plant Where models climate suitability. How- ever, other factors which are important for plant estab- lishment and growth, such as soil nutrients and pest and disease distribution, have not been considered. The modelling approach used for Which Plant Where assumes that the occurrence records from the native range of species represent the breadth of environmental conditions that species can tolerate. However, forestry and horticultural studies have found that this assumption can often be false, as factors other than climate may directly limit the species native distribution, preventing it from occurring in other regions for which it is climat- ically adapted (Booth 2017; Kendal et al. 2018). Our species distribution models were fitted with long-term Figure 3. Screenshot of filters available to users when a location-based search is performed.
July 2023
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