Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 32(4): July 2006 155 An Analysis of the Street Tree Population of Greater Melbourne at the Beginning of the 21st Century Stephen Frank, Glenn Waters, Russell Beer, and Peter May Abstract. An audit of the street tree population of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was undertaken to establish its size and botanical composition as a reference point for future studies. The 31 independent municipalities that comprise metropolitan Melbourne were approached to provide information on their respective street tree populations. Where available, data from individual municipalities on population, area, and total street length were also collected. Of the 31 municipalities surveyed, 23 had undertaken some form of street tree inventory or audit. These individual data sets were combined into a single database. Data queries were then undertaken to obtain a range of information. A total of 922,353 trees, comprising 1127 taxa, were captured in this superset of data. Australian native plants made up the majority of the trees with 60% of the total. Of the Australian native taxa, wattles (Acacia spp.), gums or eucalypts (Eucalyptus spp.), paperbarks (Melaleuca spp.), bottlebrush (Callistemon spp.), and Queensland brush box (Lophostemon confertus [R. Br.] Peter G. Wilson and Water- house) comprised 394,730 individuals (43% of all trees). Of the exotic taxa, Prunus spp. were the most common with 86,227 individuals (9% of the total). Queensland brush box was the most common taxon surveyed with 61,959 individuals. Purple-leaf cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera Ehrh. ‘Nigra’) was the most common exotic taxon with 35,402 individuals. An analysis of the diversity of this population showed that it meets a set of minimum diversity criteria apart from the dominance of the Myrtaceae at the family level. Key Words. Biodiversity; street tree history; street tree inventory; street trees. Trees have been planted in the streets of suburban Melbourne since the mid-1800s and they constitute an important element of the heritage and landscape character of Melbourne. Apart from early recordings of street tree plantings in the 1850s, little street tree data has been compiled and documented. The advent of computerized tree inventories during the 1980s has allowed street tree data compilation and analysis, but not all municipalities within metropolitan Melbourne have under- taken an inventory. Twenty-three of the 31 metropolitan Mel- bourne municipalities have undertaken some form of street tree inventory; however, there has been no recent compilation of the street tree population of the Greater Melbourne area. This study was devised with the objective of taking a “snap- shot” of the street tree population in Melbourne at the turn of the 21st century. This study will aid the improved manage- ment of street trees for the future and, importantly, will pro- vide a historical point for a view of street trees in Melbourne that may be the basis of future research and planning. BRIEF HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF MELBOURNE Melbourne was founded in 1835 and is the capital city of the state of Victoria, southeastern Australia, situated on Port Phillip Bay at the mouth of the Yarra River. The city proper occupies a relatively compact area of the northern bank of the Yarra, but Greater Melbourne sprawls around the shores of Port Phillip Bay and inland to the east and north. Greater Melbourne covers an area of approximately 8,800 km2 (3,520 mi2) and has a population of approximately 3.4 million people. Greater Melbourne comprises 31 autonomous local gov- ernments that are responsible for delivering a wide range of economic, social, recreational, and property services as well as developing and maintaining essential community infrastructure. According to the Köppen classification scheme, the cli- mate of Melbourne is in the major group “temperate” and the classification group “no dry season; warm summer” (Bureau of Meteorology 2006). The proximity of Port Phillip Bay directly influences met- ropolitan Melbourne’s climate, tempering the hottest months (January and February when the average maximum tempera- ture is 26°C [79°F]) with sea breezes. The average annual rainfall in the city of Melbourne is 656 mm (26.2 in) with the wettest months being from September to December. The annual average temperature is 19.7°C (67.5°F) with the highest average temperature in February (25.7°C [78.3°F]) and the lowest average temperature in July (13.4°C [56°F]). Freezing injury is only experienced in subtropical and tropical taxa. The soils of Melbourne are closely related to the underly- ing geologic material from which they have formed. To the north and west, basaltic parent material gives rise to clay soils. The sedimentary rock of the eastern suburbs results in loamy soils over clay subsoils. Marine deposits in the south- eastern suburbs have given rise to sandy profiles (SGAP 1991). ©2006 International Society of Arboriculture
July 2006
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