The management of vegetation and soils plays an important role in the carbon cycle in urban environments yet our understanding of carbon cycles in urban green and blue spaces is very limited. These spaces can provide essential benefits to the overall carbon balance of a city, as well as other important advantages related to flood mitigation, thermal comfort, water quality, biodiversity, reduction in air and noise pollution and improved human health and wellbeing.

In Europe, urban trees and soil across 6 locations (three parks) in Birmingham, London and Paris were studied to understand how the management of urban green spaces affected tree and soil health, and therefore the sequestration and storage of carbon. The collaborative project involved researchers from Earthwatch and from institutes in the UK and France who guided a team of citizen scientists to collect in-field soil and tree measurements as well as take soil and leaf samples to be later analysed in the lab.