Research on urban green infrastructure in Quebec: Implementation and co-benefits

Due to the growing negative impacts of urbanization and climate change, the construction of green infrastructure in urban environments is increasingly advocated in Quebec. Many disciplines and sectors of society are taking an interest in the notion of green infrastructure, giving rise to a growing ecosystem of expertise and knowledge-users in the field of green infrastructure. In Quebec, several research groups are examining this concept.

They aim to quantify and optimize the performance of green infrastructure, to better understand the co-benefits and ecosystem services it offers, and to better understand the planning of this infrastructure in urban environments.

However, these groups and research activities work in parallel and sometimes lack connections and/or communication. As such, this project aims to promote collaboration between these different groups, pool knowledge, identify gaps and avoid duplication. This will be done by means of an initiative to pool and synthesize the key findings by the various research groups and a review of the expertise on urban green infrastructure in Quebec. This project will also encourage the research community to respond to needs in a more orderly and coherent way. 

The review of the knowledge and expertise will achieve the following specific objectives:

• Identify the best available knowledge on the implementation and impacts of green infrastructure (including knowledge related to plant selection) and bring together the various experts on the documentation and representation of decision-making criteria (e.g. expert recommendations on the siting of this infrastructure with a view to more strategic planning)

• Identify needs in terms of research questions and in the field (for practitioners), while reducing overlap and facilitating collaboration (inter-institutional and interdisciplinary)

• Inform practitioners and society on the best practices and issues related to the implementation of green infrastructure

• Facilitate communication between groups of experts (researchers and practitioners) involved in advancing knowledge of green infrastructure in Quebec’s cities, and coordinate future efforts by promoting complementarity

• Profile of research groups and their work: A review of the research on green infrastructure in Quebec municipalities will be conducted to identify the best available knowledge. The results obtained will enable us to meet objectives 1 and 2.

• Discussions with identified research groups: A workshop will be organized by the research team in fall 2025. Its purpose will be to validate the results of the expertise review (step 1), identify important research avenues for Quebec, and create new research synergies between the groups.

• Summary: By means of these steps, the expertise and niches will be mapped, blind spots in the literature will be identified, and research questions and future work will be ranked in terms of priority, particularly concerning impacts and adaptation to climate change.

• An overview of the work completed over the past 10 years and the work in progress on green infrastructure in urban environments in Quebec, to provide a summary of the current knowledge in this rapidly advancing, innovative field

• New research synergies (collaborations) between researchers and with practitioners

• Identification of functional traits of plants with good performance (growth, health) in bioretention structures
   

This topic under study is funded by the Government of Quebec and meets the objectives of the Plan pour une économie verte 2030.

• Danielle Dagenais, UdeM

• Thi Thanh Hiên Pham, UQAM

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