Policies and strategies for tree management and protection on a national, regional, and local level have not sufficiently considered differences between rural and urban areas. We used expert knowledge to compare rural and urban areas in a case study evaluating the relative importance of ecosystem services (ES) in policy development. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and focus group discussions were used to rank 17 ES, representing four classes of services: provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural. The results indicated that effective protection strategies, beyond simply increasing general tree cover, should consider specific benefits trees provide to local communities. We discuss the role of objective prioritization of ES delivered by trees in urban and rural areas and their consequences for decision-making processes.

Trees growing on private property have become an essential part of urban green policies. In many places, restrictions are imposed on tree removal on private property. However, monitoring compliance of these regulations appears difficult due to a lack of reference data and public administration capacity. We assessed the impact of the temporary suspension of mandatory permits on tree removal, which was in force in 2017 in Poland, on the change in urban tree cover (UTC) in the case of the municipality of Racibórz. The bi-temporal airborne laser scanning (ALS) point clouds (2011 and 2017) and administrative records on tree removal permits were used for analyzing the changes of UTC in the period of 2011–2017. The results show increased tree removal at a time when the mandatory permit was suspended. Moreover, it appeared that most trees on private properties were removed without obtaining permission when it was obligatory. The method based on LiDAR we proposed allows for monitoring green areas, including private properties.

One of the most significant and growing negative pressures on the environment is the amount of generated waste. Surprisingly, the literature on this topic is mainly focused on monitoring the waste weight instead of volume, which is crucial for waste management in urban space. This paper is dedicated to this issue in two ways. First of all the study shows the difference in waste generation rates monitored in Poznań - a major city in Poland, during one year of field research focused on waste volume and its relationship to administrative data about waste weight. Secondly, it describes the volume-weight relationship based on the collection point sensors and a dynamic weighing system installed on a garbage truck and proposes a more accurate weight to volume conversion method.

Studies on society and the environment interface are often based on simple questionnaires that do not allow for an in-depth analysis. Research conducted with geo-questionnaires is an increasingly common method. However, even if data collected via a geo-questionnaire are available, the shared databases provide limited information due to personal data protection. In the article, we present open databases that overcome those limitations. They are the result of the iTre-es project concerning public opinion on the benefits provided by trees and shrubs in four different research areas. The databases provide information on the location of trees that are valuable to the residents, the distances from the respondents’ residence place, their attitude toward tree removal, socio-demographic variables, attachment to the place of life, and environmental attitudes. The presentation of all these aspects was possible thanks to the appropriate aggregation of the results. A method to anonymize the respondents is presented. We discuss the collected data and their possible areas of application.