Improving knowledge of urban vegetation by applying GIS technology to existing databases

Abstract

ABSTRACT Question: Can we improve the knowledge of urban vegetation using data from ongoing floristic and management projects with a data mining approach? We have two questions: 1. How strong is the relationship between land cover pattern and the species composition of vegetation? 2. What is the relationship between land cover pattern and species richness? Location: Trieste, northeastern Italy. Methods: Using land cover maps and GIS we characterized the cells of a floristic project grid by percentage cover of land cover types. We applied Canonical Correlation Analysis to test the correlation between floristic composition of the cells and land cover. We classified the cells by clustering methods, based on land cover description. With these clusters, we analysed the variation of species composition of urban vegetation along a gradient of urban density. We used Jaccard's similarity index to compare floristic composition of the clusters with the floristic composition of the homogeneous cells with respect to t...