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Abstract
Assessing the species diversity of an urban forest is important for understanding its structure and functions, but the result can be affected by sampling methods, times, and delimitations of the study area. In this study, we examined the influence of different ways to delimit boundaries of urban areas on the assessment of species diversity of urban forests through a case study conducted in Haikou, China. We surveyed the species diversity of the urban forest in Haikou twice using the same sampling protocol but two commonly used delimitations of the urban area. The two surveys produced significantly different estimates of species richness of the urban forest. Recorded species richness was 228 (144 woody and 84 herbaceous species) and 303 (164 woody and 139 herbaceous species) for the first and the second survey, respectively. The rarefaction analysis indicated that species richness of woody plants recorded in the two surveys could converge by doubling the sample size, but species richness of herbaceous plants was significantly different between the two surveys at the 95% confidence interval even at three times the original sample size. The value of the Simpson dissimilarity index between the two surveys was 0.417 and 0.357 for woody and herbaceous plants respectively, which implied noticeable dissimilarity of species compositions of plant assemblages in the two areas. We concluded that the assessment of biodiversity of an urban forest can be affected significantly by how the boundary of an urban area is defined. Caution should be taken when comparing species diversities of urban forests reported in different studies, especially when richness measures are used.
Highlights
Humans live in an increasingly urbanized world
Based on the (AGR); commercial, institutional, or industrial lands (CII); public green residential areas field records, surveyed sample plots were classified as seven land use typesspaces (Figure (PGS); 2): agricultural areas (AGR);areas commercial, industrial lands public green spacesThe (PGS); (RES); transportation (TRA);institutional, transitionalorareas (TRS); and(CII); woodlands (WOO)
Results of Welch t-tests showed that the species richness for the same type of land use obtained from the two surveys was significantly different except for woody plants in PGS and transitional areas (TRS) (Table 3)
Summary
Humans live in an increasingly urbanized world. More than 50% of the global population currently lives in urban areas and the number will increase to 66% by 2050 [1]. It is predicted that global urban land cover will increase by 1.2 million km by 2030 and will directly impact 1.8% of all biodiversity hotspot areas [2]. Because of these expected changes, conserving and enhancing urban biodiversity has become an increasingly important task. It can help to increase public awareness of the importance of biodiversity conservation since more than half of the global population experiences “nature” primarily in urban
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