Urban tree growth models for two nearby cities show notable differences
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Urban tree growth models for two nearby cities show notable differences Adam Berland 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Reliable models of urban tree growth over time are useful for selecting appropriate species for available planting sites, anticipating future tree maintenance and removal costs, and quantifying the benefits provided by trees. There is a need to develop growth models for multiple cities within the same climate region to understand the degree of variability for the same species in different cities. In this study, we developed tree growth models for 13 common street tree species in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, based on field data and planting records. These models relate tree age to diameter at breast height. Then we compared the modeled tree growth curves for Cincinnati to analogous models from nearby Indianapolis, Indiana. To estimate how differences in modeled tree growth translate to differences in ecosystem services, we compared annual ecosystem service estimates from Cincinnati and Indianapolis using the i-Tree Eco model. The comparisons showed varying levels of difference between cities; for example, modeled growth curves for Acer platanoides were nearly identical, while models for Pyrus calleryana differed by > 47% over 35 years of growth. These results advance our understanding of urban tree growth rates by comparing models from two nearby cities, and by underscoring the inherent variability in urban tree growth that will drive attendant differences in the ecosystem services provided by trees. Keywords Diameter at breast height (DBH) . Ecosystem services modeling . i-Tree Eco model . Street trees . Tree age
Introduction The urban forest, defined as all trees within an urban area, is an important part of the urban environment. Urban forests provide a wide array of both ecosystem services and ecosystem disservices related to environmental outcomes, human health and social wellbeing, and economics (Escobedo et al. 2011; Dobbs et al. 2014). While the benefits of urban trees are generally thought to outweigh the disservices (McPherson et al. 2005), strategic management of the urban forest can promote ecosystem services and reduce disservices (Lyytimäki and Sipilä 2009). This is especially true for street trees – trees growing in the public right-of-way along streets – because they are distributed broadly throughout a city and they are often managed by one entity such as the municipal Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01015-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Adam Berland [email protected] 1
Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA
government (Hauer and Peterson 2016). Although street trees are less abundant than trees on private property, they are often the most abundant group of trees subject to collective management by the municipality or another entity. Furthermore, street trees are highly visible and more accessible
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