Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 47(5): September 2021 2016) and by changing the patterns and intensity of precipitation and drought (Easterling et al. 2000; David et al. 2018). Reducing reliance on overly abundant tree species susceptible to drought or soil inundation could mitigate the risk of future tree loss due to climate change (McPherson et al. 2018). Diversity is not a panacea for enhancing the sur- vivability of urban tree populations. Street trees in particular are vulnerable to a host of environmental stressors (Quigley 2004), and diversity does not insure against the mortality associated with development, vandalism, and harmful maintenance practices (Steen- berg et al. 2017). Moreover, some tree species are more resistant to harsh urban conditions and better candidates for survival (Roloff et al. 2009), which explains in part their abundance relative to other tree species and limits to some extent the choices avail- able for increasing diversity (Richards 1993; Watson 2017). Finally, planting decisions made today for increasing diversity may prove unsuccessful in the future with the onset of a new invasive pest or disease (Greene and Millward 2016). Notwithstanding these caveats, officials tasked with setting urban forest pol- icy and priorities on national, state, and municipal levels have recognized the importance of diversity in municipal tree populations and promoted increased diversity where populations are insufficiently diverse. For example, the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC 2015) has associated increased diversity with greater resilience in urban and community tree populations and sup- ported the use of site-appropriate species adaptable to climate change and resistant to insect and disease damage; the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (2015) has encouraged the “expansion of [the] spe- cies palette” to improve urban forest health and sur- vival; and the City of Portland, Oregon (2020) has advocated for planting a diversity of trees as “an important step toward creating a healthier and more resilient urban forest.” Moreover, in Vancouver, Can- ada, a study of urban forestry practitioners found that “urban tree diversity” and “physical access to nature” were rated as the two most significant indicators of a healthy and resilient urban forest (Barron et al. 2016). If the health and stability of the urban forest are correlated, at least in part, with tree diversity, then it is crucial for officials responsible for the management of municipal trees to know the diversity of those tree populations. In addition, if efforts have been made to 197 increase diversity where tree populations were found insufficiently diverse, it would be helpful to compare diversity metrics at multiple points in time in order to understand the extent to which these efforts have been effective and if strategies need to be changed. In the United States, many studies have analyzed munic- ipal tree diversity at a single point in time for a partic- ular municipality (Sanders 1981; Maco and McPherson 2003), and some studies have done the same for mul- tiple municipalities (Raupp et al. 2006; Subburayalu and Sydnor 2012) or on a statewide basis (Ball et al. 2007; Cumming et al. 2008; McPherson et al. 2016). Fewer studies have analyzed municipal tree diversity at multiple points in time for one or more municipal- ities (Dawson and Khawaja 1985; Lockwood and Berland 2019), still fewer have done this on a state- wide basis (Gartner et al. 2002), and, to the best of our knowledge, only Ma et al. (2020) have done so on a national basis in the United States. We examine street tree diversity on a statewide basis in New York State by analyzing street tree inventory data obtained from municipalities in the state. This analysis has two com- ponents. The first is a statewide assessment that builds on two previous statewide assessments (Cowett and Bassuk 2014; Cowett and Bassuk 2017) by analyzing more current data. The second is an assessment lim- ited to those municipalities in the state for which data collected at multiple points in time are available and directly comparable. Based on these assessments, we evaluate diversity in the state’s street tree population and consider whether diversity appears sufficient to sustain the environmental, social, and economic ben- efits that these trees provide. MATERIALS AND METHODS Study Area New York State is located in the Northeast of the United States (Figure 1). It is the 30th largest state with a land area of 122,056 km2 (47,126 square miles), the 4th most populous state with an estimated population of 19,453,561, and the 7th most densely populated state with a population of 158.76 per km2 (411.2 per square mile)(United States Census Bureau 2019). The state is divided into 57 counties which are subdivided into cities, towns, and Indian Reserva- tions; the 5 boroughs of New York City (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island) each comprise an additional county (NYSDOS 2018). Towns may contain villages and hamlets; a village is ©2021 International Society of Arboriculture
September 2021
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