There are multiple benefits of urban trees, as well as urban green spaces in general, including:
Protecting biodiversity
Cooling cities
Filtering pollutants from the air
Improving human physical health
Improving human mental health
Managing storm water

The Lettice lab is involved in a number of community-based projects in this area:

South Parish Tree Survey
A CARL (Community-Academic Research Links) project involving Green Spaces for Health, we use on-site tree surveying and the iTrees platform to quantify the benefits of urban trees in this area of Cork city. The methods developed will allow us to engage other communities in similar projects and to amass a considerable amount of data on trees in a variety of urban settings.

CUBA (Community-University Biodiversity Action)
A UCC-SECAD Partnership with the Carrigtwohill and Passage West communities and led by Wild Work. This is a citizen science project that encourages communities to map signature trees in their locality.