Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 47(1): January 2021 between 1902 and 2019. The 1902 inventory was conducted by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station in conjunction with an article on the value of street trees in the United States and Europe (Murrill 1902). Street trees were surveyed, but not park trees. At some point between 1928 and 1947 (the exact date is unknown), City Forester Richard Baker conducted an inventory comprised almost entirely of street trees (a few park trees were also surveyed), in which symbols identifying tree locations were drawn on 180 maps of city streets, along with notations for genus, trunk diameter, and condition (Figure 2). The 1928 to 1947 time frame derives from occasional nota- tions on the series of maps which mostly pertain to tree removal dates. The tree symbols bear close resem- blance to symbols illustrating a 1920 map drawn by civil engineer Carl Crandall for the Village of Cayuga Heights, which borders Ithaca to the north. Baker became City Forester in 1924, and so the inventory was not conducted before then and was likely con- ducted at the front end of the 1928 to 1947 time frame, not over the course of 19 years. Baker’s inventory was followed by inventories in 1987 and 1996 con- ducted by graduate students. The 1987 inventory was supervised by the city’s Shade Tree Advisory Com- mittee. Data for street trees only were collected on paper and then entered into a computer database for analysis. The 1996 inventory was supervised by City Forester Andrew Hillman, in which data were col- lected with handheld computers for both street and park trees. These data were later scrubbed by the city’s Planning Department and then integrated with the city’s geographic information system (GIS). Finally, in 2006, 2013, and 2019, GIS-based invento- ries were conducted by professional arborists who collected data for both street and park trees. Ideally, Ithaca’s 7 inventories would contain the same data attributes and metrics so that summary data and data for individual trees for all inventories would be directly comparable. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For example, in the 1902 inventory, summary statistics for street-tree species, genus, and condition are the only data currently available, and the invento- ry’s precise geographic extent is unknown. In con- trast, the 2019 inventory, along with the 1996, 2006, and 2013 inventories preceding it, contains data on individual street and park trees for many more attri- butes than species, genus, and condition, and geo- graphic extent can be determined from the latitude 5 and longitude coordinates collected for each tree. Additionally, the 1902 inventory probably does not include trees located in the Cornell Heights district, which was not annexed by the city until 1903; this district contained 218 street trees in the 2019 inven- tory, or 2.67% of all street trees contained in that inventory. As a result of these differences, the 1902 inventory data do not fully conflate with the 2019 inventory data, and comparisons between the inven- tories are limited to summary statistics for street tree species, genus, and condition. Similarly, the 1928– 1947 inventory contains data for individual trees, and its maps pinpoint tree locations, whereas only sum- mary statistics are available for the 1987 inventory (data were collected for individual trees but cannot be found). However, the 2006, 2013, and 2019 invento- ries utilize the same data fields and metrics and share the same unique identifier for individual trees. Accordingly, comparisons can effectively be made between these inventories, both on a population level and for individual trees. Table 1 lists the 7 tree inventories and the differ- ences between them. A distinction has been made between street and park trees. The Bray-Curtis Index (Bray and Curtis 1957; Table 2) was utilized to assess the similarity/dissimilarity of the composition of Ithaca street and park trees for both species and gen- era. An index value of 0 indicates the same species and genus composition, and a value of 1 indicates no shared species or genera. An index value of 0.667 was found for Ithaca street and park tree species, and a value of 0.630 was found for street and park tree genera, reflecting more dissimilarity than similarity in street and park tree composition. These findings are consistent with findings made by previous studies that the dynamics and population structures of street and park trees are significantly different and sugges- tions that street and park trees may require separate management strategies (Welch 1994; Nielsen et al. 2007; North et al. 2018). Data were not collected for the city’s park trees until 1996, except for a few trees in the 1928–1947 inventory which have not been included in this study. The parks themselves vary from large, primarily landscaped recreational areas adjacent to waterfront, to smaller, more urbanized areas contained within the city’s street grid. Planted, cultivated trees contained in these park areas were inventoried in the 1996, 2006, 2013, and 2019 inven- tories. Trees inventoried as park trees include those ©2021 International Society of Arboriculture
January 2021
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