Patterns of Street Tree Diversity and Density Across a Scocioeconomic Gradient in California Cities

ISBN-10
ISBN-13
9798209884613
Category
Dissertations, Academic
Language
English
Published
2021
Author
Lilian Chou

Description

Urbanization, the process of humans converting natural landscapes into developed areas, usually results in homogenized landscapes in cities. Many cities, despite differences in sizes and locations, plant, cultivate, and maintain urban forests. Previous studies have mapped urban forest tree canopies and explored the luxury effect hypothesis, which describes greater biodiversity in wealthier communities. Building on these findings, I tested the luxury effect with a focus on street trees, which are public resources planted in cities rights-of-way, and are a subcomponent of the total urban forest. I tested whether street tree total, density, diversity, and DBH varied across a socioeconomic gradient within six California cities: Anaheim, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Pasadena, and San Francisco. I had two objectives for my analysis: (1) to quantify patterns of street tree distributions across cities, and (2) within cities. My second objective is designed to discern whether cities of varying sizes and management policies, influence street tree patterns. For my first objective, results show positive relationships between tree density and tree total to median income, but a negative relationship between tree species richness and median income. For my second objective, statistically significant results show positive relationships between median income and tree density and tree total, but show negative relationships between median income and tree species richness in all six cities. The resulting analyses generally support the luxury effect across cities (objective 1), with results within cities (objective 2) mirroring the across all cities analyses. In addition, analyzing patterns within cities reveals the differences between socioeconomic ranges within cities, indicating that urban foresters and other stakeholders should consider whether areas of high and low income are receiving equal treatment.

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