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Henrik Sjöman: ‘DENDRO FUTURA' – THE TREES OF TOMORROW
Sunday, March 10, 2024, 12:30 PM - 3:00 PM PST
Category: Programs

HPSO 2024 Speaker Series Presents
Henrik Sjöman
‘DENDRO FUTURA’ – THE TREES OF TOMORROW
Doors open at 12:30 PM. Presentation begins at 1 PM
March 10, 2024
Portland State University, Hoffmann Hall, 1833 SW 11th Ave, Portland, OR 97201 | Map
‘DENDRO FUTURA’ – THE TREES OF TOMORROW
Trees are among our best allies in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Although we often think of them in forests, most of our interactions with trees take place in urban environments and in private gardens, where they provide us with shade, heat control, flood avoidance, noise and pollution reduction, beauty, and much more. However, to maintain and increase those manifold benefits we urgently need to rethink tree selection for our parks and gardens, to include those species and provenances most suitable for the environmental conditions and stresses posed by a rapidly changing and unpredictable climate, spreading pests and emerging plant diseases. To create resilience to present and future challenges, where the exact consequences of future scenarios cannot be predicted in advance, a commonly proposed solution is to cultivate a large diversity of trees, i.e., increase tree diversity at many taxonomic levels. Achieving an increased diversity of trees to improve the resilience to future conditions is likely to involve greater use of non-traditional species and unique genetic types of trees. In this presentation an insight in a unique research profile is presented with focus on how to find and evaluate the trees of tomorrow based on travels all over the world to study natural environments matching urban environments and further evaluation of trees for urban challenges in order to create a first hand guidance finding right tree for right place and function.

Henrik Sjöman is Scientific Curator at Gothenburg Botanical Garden, a Senior Researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He specializes in how trees deliver ecosystem services in urban landscapes and the practical applications of this in terms of diversifying the urban treescape. Henrik communicates his research through numerous publications and by lecturing to urban planners, landscape architects, garden designers and tree nurseries throughout the world. He is co-author (with Arit Anderson) of a new book called 'The Essential Tree Selection Guide: For Climate Resilience, Carbon Storage, Species Diversity and Other Ecosystem Benefits'. This will be an in-person event only. 
This event is proudly sponsored by: