Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 41(3): May 2015 swell, greenspace and green places in cities will pro- vide for most people’s contact with nature. However, despite their environmental importance and the large amounts of money spent to maintain them, there is still much that is not known (Nowak et al. 2010). Although the urban forest composition of all cit- ies have been shaped by these three factors, there are few cities for which data exist to allow compari- son and quantification of pre-urban forest species composition and structure with current conditions. Having such data would allow for informed selec- tion of trees for current planting programs that reflect species historically present—in terms of composition and relative frequency. To the extent practical, a focus on plantings that recreate histori- cal forest have the potential to promote biodiversity across the spectrum of urban biota that rely on trees. These data do exist for the City of Indianapo- lis, Indiana, in the American Midwest. Indianapo- lis is the thirteenth largest city in the United States and is a state capital. It was founded in a sparsely populated area in 1820, not by settlers, but by a proclamation of the U.S. Congress (Bodenhamer and Barrows 1994). The land on which the city was developed was surveyed by the federal govern- ment around the time Indianapolis was founded, as part of the opening of the Northwest Terri- tory. Witness trees were identified to species and their sizes recorded as the land was surveyed. This paper compares these historical records with recent data on trees collected from remnant natural areas and with inventories of street trees in the city. Objectives were to document how tree composition and size have changed over 200 years and to examine the implications of con- temporary tree planting efforts in light of these changes. Patterns reported here are likely repre- sentative of those in many forested areas under- going land conversion and development, putting numbers on trends that apply to many cities. MATERIAL AND METHODS Natural Region Setting and History of Indianapolis Indianapolis is located in Marion County, Indiana, in the center of the state. The city and the county are the same governmental unit, and so occupy the same geographic space, referred to as India- 137 napolis in this paper. Indianapolis has an estimated 900,000 people in a total area of 105,200 hectares, a very high human population density of 3,557/ km2 by United States standards (City Data 2015). The city is located in the Central Till Plain Sec- tion of the Central Till Plain Natural Region (Homoya et al. 1985). Topographically, there is little relief except where streams cut into uncon- solidated glacial till. Historical records and soil survey records indicate Indianapolis was almost entirely forested in pre-European presettlement times (Barr et al. 2002), with remaining land cover being open water or prairie. Mesic upland for- est, mostly beech-maple association (Potzger et al. 1956), covered 76% of the county, with small areas of drier upland forest on ridges. Wet-mesic depressional forests were scattered throughout the county with floodplain forests along major rivers and tributaries. These forests were reduced to 13% cover by the late 1900s (Barr et al. 2002). Remain- ing forest cover is found in remnant natural areas and scattered woodlots, usually along streams in areas too wet or steep for farming (Brothers 1994). Logging and grazing likely occurred on these sites. Sources of Data Three sources of tree data were analyzed for this study. Two are culled from previously published studies. Historical data from the 1820 General Land Office surveys for Marion County were tran- scribed from original records and summarized in Barr et al. (2002). Detailed individual tree size (e.g., diameter, assumed to be diameter at breast height, DBH) data were provided by the lead au- thor of that paper for this current study; the data set is referred to as “historical.” Current street tree species and sizes are from a forest resource analy- sis prepared for the City of Indianapolis by Peper et al. (2008). Finally, original to this paper, cur- rent tree composition in remnant natural areas in the city is presented, based on transect sampling conducted at five sites. All three sources provide data on individual tree identities and diameters. Forest inventory data are also available for Marion and other counties in the United States through the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (USDA FIAP 2015). This program now uses remote sensing combined with a sample of ground- truthed field plots to evaluate forest health annually. ©2015 International Society of Arboriculture
May 2015
| Title Name |
Pages |
Delete |
Url |
| Empty |
Search Text Block
Page #page_num
#doc_title
Hi $receivername|$receiveremail,
$sendername|$senderemail wrote these comments for you:
$message
$sendername|$senderemail would like for you to view the following digital edition.
Please click on the page below to be directed to the digital edition:
$thumbnail$pagenum
$link$pagenum
Your form submission was a success. You will be contacted by Washington Gas with follow-up information regarding your request.
This process might take longer please wait
