Steven Frank

Area(s) of Expertise

Urban trees provide numerous ecosystem services to urban residents and the population at large. Preserving tree health is critical to urban quality of life and reducing climate change. We study how the urban heat island effect increases arthropod pest abundance and damage on urban trees. We also study congruence between urban and global warming to determine if cities could serve as canaries in the coal mine of climate change to predict pest outbreaks in natural forests.