Collection and Quantification of Leaf Litter from Urban Street Plantation: A Case Study on South-West Delhi, India

Abstract

Plantation of urban street trees is being actively promoted as a forecast to facilitate urban areas to adapt and mitigate against climate change, augment urban sustainability, reduce air and noise pollution and avenue beautification. Urban biomass from green areas is a potential resource for bioenergy recovery, which is widely unused in India. Different types of organic material (e.g., grass, leaf litter) produced play an important role in ecosystem services after decomposition in soil, which usually occur in mixtures due to common collecting practice. Leaf litter produced and shed from roadside trees are an increasing concern and burden to the city administration, which has the responsibility to dispose the autumn foliage. Despite being banned (Municipal Solid Waste (Handling and Management rules) 2000), this leaf litter undergoes illicit burning in the city which causes pollution. Delhi itself is experiencing a very bad phase of air pollution, hence, such activities pronounce the effect. Hence, this study focused on methods of collection and quantification of the leaf litter produced from selected road transect in South-West Delhi. The methodology utilized here in the collection of the leaf litter was the sweeping method accompanied by weighing at the collection centre. The collection was conducted in collaboration with South Delhi Municipal Corporation in the post leaf fall period (March to mid-May). The total length of the transect covered was 11 km and the average leaf litter collected per day was 68.7 kg during the peak time with maxima and minima being 105.5 kg and 25 kg, respectively. Since leaf litter produced by roadside trees is an increasing burden to the city administration, the problem could be tackled effectively if the collected leaf litter can be converted to useful manure and solid fuel.