Abstract
Urban forests are recognized worldwide as the most critical component of green infrastructure due to their capacity to provide various environmental goods and services. As cities continue to expand and their environmental problems intensify, there is a growing need for urban forests and green infrastructure to be better incorporated into strategic land-use planning, especially in developing cities. The first step in building an urban forest management plan is to capture characteristics of the urban forest and how these change across the built environment. Here, we used an urban biotope approach to classify urban forests and environmental characteristics in Mexico City. We sampled 500 fixed-area randomly stratified plots across the city to characterize urban forest structural and compositional variables. PCA and the broken-stick method were used to reduce the number of 25 urban forest variables down to five significant principal components that accounted for 78% of the data's cumulative variation. Ward's method helped classify biotopes into a hierarchical system with seven finer-level biotopes defined by urban forest characteristics (Dunn = 0.09, AC = 0.98), nested within two broader-level biotopes defined by forest canopy conditions (Silhouette = 0.59, AC = 0.99). A no-tree canopy biotope was extracted from sampling locations with no trees. The biotopes derived here can fundament biotope mapping, and support decision-making in urban forest planning, including the identification of available planting spaces, tree diversity targets, and canopy protection. Our work in Mexico City demonstrates how the biotope approach can be adapted and used to better incorporate urban forests and green infrastructure into future management planning for any city.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of data and material
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
Reference lists
Ahern J (2007) Green infrastructure for cities: The spatial dimension. In: Novotny V, Brown P (eds) Cities of the future: towards integrated sustainable water and landscape management. IWA Publishing, London, pp 267–283
Alvey A (2006) Promoting and preserving biodiversity in the urban forest. Urban For Urban Green 5:195–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2006.09.003
Benavides Meza HM, Fernández Grandizo DY (2012) Estructura del arbolado y caracterización dasométrica de la segunda sección del Bosque de Chapultepec. Madera y Bosques 18:51–71
Bourne KS, Conway TM (2014) The influence of land use type and municipal context on urban tree species diversity. Urban Ecosyst 17:329–348. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-013-0317-0
Bravo-Bello JC, Martinez-Trinidad T, Valdez-Lazalde R, Romero-Sánchez ME, Martínez-Trinidad S (2020) Analyzing potential tree-planting sites and tree coverage in Mexico City using satellite imagery. Forests 11(4):423. https://doi.org/10.3390/f11040423
Brock G, Pihur V, Datta S, Datta S (2008) clValid: An R package for cluster validation. J Stat Softw 25(4):1–22
Buja K, Meza CH (2012) Sampling design tool for ArcGIS instruction manual. NOAA's Biogeography Branch. http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f7289cfc69204aa688e8c7c739fc0901 Accessed Dec 2016
Burton ML, Samuelson LJ, Pan S (2005) Riparian woody plant diversity and forest structure along an urban–rural gradient. Urban Ecosyst 8(1):93–106
Cadenasso ML, Pickett STA, Schwarz K (2007) Spatial heterogeneity in urban ecosystems: reconceptualizing land cover and a framework for Classification. Front Ecol Environ 5:80–88. https://doi.org/10.1890/1540-9295(2007)5[80:SHIUER]2.0.CO;2
Castillo-Argüero S, Montes-Cartas G, Romero-Romero MA, Martínez-Orea Y, Guadarrama-Chávez P, Sánchez-Gallén I, Núñez-Castillo O (2004) Dinámica y conservación de la flora del matorral xerófilo de la Reserva Ecológica del Pedregal de San Ángel (D.F., México). Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México 74:5–75. https://doi.org/10.17129/botsci.1686
Chimal-Hernández A, Corona V (2016) Árboles urbanos. In: Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) y Secretaría del Medio Ambiente del Distrito Federal (SEDEMA) La biodiversidad en la Ciudad de México, Vol. II. CONABIO/SEDEMA, Mexico City, pp 122–145
CONABIO (2016) Cobertura del suelo de México, 2011, a 250 metros (Land use cover of Mexico, 2011, 250 meters). http://www.conabio.gob.mx/informacion/metadata/gis/nalcmsmx11gw.xml?_httpcache=yes&_xsl=/db/metadata/xsl/fgdc_html.xsl&_indent=no Accessed in May 2020
Conway TM, Bourne KS (2013) A comparison of neighborhood characteristics related to canopy cover, stem density, and species richness in an urban forest. Landsc Urban Plan 113:10–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2013.01.005
Copernicus Sentinel-2 data (2021). Retrieved from the United States Geological Survey in 2021, processed by ESA
Cousins SAO, Ihse M (1998) A methodological study for biotope and landscape mapping based on CIR aerial photographs. Landsc Urban Plan 41:183–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(98)00057-7
Davis MA, Chew MK, Hobbs RJ et al (2011) Don’t judge species on their origins. Nature 474:153–154. https://doi.org/10.1038/474153a
Dobbs C, Kendal D, Nitschke C (2013) The effects of land tenure and land use on the urban forest structure and composition of Melbourne. Urban For Urban Green 12:417–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2013.06.006
Dunn JC (1974) Well-separated clusters and fuzzy partitions. J Cybern 4:95–104
Escobedo F, Nowak D (2009) Spatial heterogeneity and air pollution removal by an urban forest. Landsc Urban Plan 90:102–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.10.021
ESRI (2016) ArcGIS Desktop: Release 10.4. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA
Fan Ch, Johnston M, Darling L, Scott L, Liao FH (2019) Land use and socio-economic determinants of urban forest structure and diversity. Landsc Urban Plan 181:10–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.09.012
Fernández-Álvarez R (2017) Inequitable distribution of green public space in the Mexico City: an environmental injustice case. Econ Soc Territ 54:399–428
Freeman C, Buck O (2003) Development of an ecological mapping methodology for urban areas in New Zealand. Landsc Urban Plan 63(3):161–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(02)00188-3
Gao T, Qiu L, Hammer M, Gunnarsson A (2012) The importance of temporal and spatial vegetation structure information in biotope mapping schemes: A case study in Helsingborg, Sweden. Environ Manag 49:459–472. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-011-9795-0
González-Hidalgo B, Orozco-Segovia A, Diego-Pérez N (2001) La vegetación de la Reserva Ecológica Lomas del Seminario, Ajusco, México. Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México 69:77–99. https://doi.org/10.17129/botsci.1648
Heiden U, Segl K, Roessner S, Kaufmann H (2003) Ecological evaluation of urban biotope types using airborne hyperspectral HyMap data. 2nd GRSS/ISPRS Joint Workshop on Remote Sensing and Data Fusion over Urban Areas. Berlin, pp 18–22. https://doi.org/10.1109/DFUA.2003.1219950
Heynen NC, Lindsey G (2003) Correlates of urban forest canopy cover: Implications for local public works. Public Works Manag Policy 8:33e47
Hong SK, Song I, Byun B, Yoo S, Nakagoshi N (2005) Applications of biotope mapping for spatial environmental planning and policy: case studies in urban ecosystems in Korea. Landsc Ecol Eng 1:101–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-005-0026-9
Huang SL, Lai HY, Lee HL (2001) Energy hierarchy and urban landscape system. Landsc Urban Plan 53(1–4):145–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(00)00150-X
INEGI (1999) Conjunto de datos edafológicos (Vectorial) Esc 1:1 000 000. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática. https://www.inegi.org.mx/app/biblioteca/ficha.html?upc=702825267636. Accessed Jul 2016
INEGI (2015) Encuesta intercensal 2015. https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/intercensal/2015/. Accessed Nov 2016
Iverson LR, Cook EA (2000) Urban forest cover of the Chicago region and its relation to household density and income. Urban Ecosyst 4:105–124
Jackson DA (1993) Stopping rules in principal components analysis: a comparison of heuristical and statistical approaches. Ecology 74:2204–2214. https://doi.org/10.2307/1939574
Jarvis PJ, Young CH (2005) The mapping of urban habitat and its evaluation. A discussion paper prepared for the Urban Forum of the United Kingdom Man and the Biosphere Programme. School of Applied Sciences University of Wolverhampton
Jensen JR (2005) Introductory digital image processing: a remote sensing perspective. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River
Jim CY, Liu HT (2001) Species diversity of three major urban forest types in Guangzhou City, China. For Ecol Manag 146:99–114
Jolliffe IT (2002) Principal Component Analysis. Springer-Verlag, New York
Kindt R, Coe R (2005) Tree diversity analysis. A manual and software for common statistical methods for ecological and biodiversity studies. World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi. http://www.worldagroforestry.org/output/tree-diversity-analysis
Konijnendijk CC, Richard RM, Kenney A, Randrup TB (2006) Defining urban forestry– a comparative perspective of North America and Europe. Urban For Urban Green 4:93–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2005.11.003
Löfvenhaft K, Björn C, Ihse M (2002) Biotope patterns in urban areas: a conceptual model integrating biodiversity issues in spatial planning. Landsc Urban Plan 58:223–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(01)00223-7
Lovell ST, Taylor JR (2013) Supplying urban ecosystem services through multifunctional green infrastructure in the United States. Landsc Ecol 28:1447–1463
Lovell ST, Johnston DM (2009) Creating multifunctional landscapes: how can the field of ecology inform the design of the landscape? Front Ecol Environ 7:212–220
Lu X, Wang X (2018) A methodological study of biotope mapping in urban areas: case of Xuanwu District, Nanjing City, China. J Digit Landsc 3:208–216. https://doi.org/10.14627/537642022
Maechler M, Rousseeuw P, Struyf A, Hubert M, Hornik K (2019) cluster: Cluster Analysis Basics and Extensions. R package version 2.1.0
Mansuroglu S, Ortacesme V, Karaguzel O (2006) Biotope mapping in an urban environment and its implications for urban management in Turkey. J Environ Manag 81:175–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2005.10.008
Maurer U, Peschel T, Schmitz S (2000) The flora of selected urban land-use types in Berlin and Potsdam with regard to nature conservation in cities. Landsc Urban Plan 46:209–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(99)00066-3
Morrone JJ (2010) Fundamental biogeographic patterns across the Mexican Transition Zone: an evolutionary approach. Ecography 33:355–361. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2010.06266.x
Muthulingam U, Thangavel S (2012) Density, diversity and richness of woody plants in urban green spaces: A case study in Chennai metropolitan city. Urban For Urban Green 11:450–459
Niemelä J (1999) Is there a need for a theory of urban ecology? Urban Ecosyst 3:57–65
Nowak DJ, Hoehn RE, Bodine AR et al (2016) Urban forest structure, ecosystem services and change in Syracuse, NY. Urban Ecosyst 19:1455–1477. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-013-0326-z
Nowak DJ, Crane DE, Stevens JC, Hoehn RE, Walton JT (2008) A ground-based method of assessing urban forest structure and ecosystem services. Arboric Urban For 34:347–358
Nowak DJ, Hoehn RE, Crane DE, Stevens JC, Walton JT (2007) Assessing urban forest effects and values, New York City’s urban forest. Resource Bulletin NRS-9, Newtown Square, PA
Nowak DJ, Kuroda M, Crane DE (2004) Tree mortality rates and tree population projections in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Urban For Urban Green 2:139e147. https://doi.org/10.1078/1618-8667-00030
Nowak DJ, Noble MH, Sisinni SM, Dwyer JF (2001) Assessing the U.S. urban forest resource. J For 99:37–42
Nowak DJ, Crane DE (2000) The Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) model: quantifying urban forest structure and functions. In: Hansen M, Burk T (eds) Integrated Tools for Natural Resources Inventories in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the IUFRO Conference, St. Paul MN, pp 714–720
Nowak DJ, Rowntree RA, McPherson EG, Sisinni SM, Kerkmann ER, Stevens JC (1996) Measuring and analyzing urban tree cover. Landsc Urban Plan 36:49–57
Ordóñez C, Duinker PN (2012) Ecological integrity in urban forests. Urban Ecosyst 15:863–877. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-012-0235-6
Ortega-Álvarez R, Rodríguez-Correa HA, MacGregor-Fors I (2011) Trees and the City: diversity and composition along a neotropical gradient of urbanization. Int J Ecol 704084:8. https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/704084
Owen SM, MacKenzie AR, Bunce RGH, Stewart HE, Donovan RG, Stark G, Hewitt CN (2006) Urban land classification and its uncertainties using principal component and cluster analyses: A case study for the UK West Midlands. Landsc Urban Plan 78(4):311–321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2005.11.002
PAOT (2010) Presente y Futuro de las Áreas Verdes y del Arbolado Urbano de la Ciudad de México. PAOT, México City
Pataki DE, McCarthy HR, Gillespie T, Jenerette GD, Pincetl S (2013) A trait-based ecology of the Los Angeles urban forest. Ecosphere 4(6):1–20. https://doi.org/10.1890/ES13-00017.1
Peres-Neto PR, Jackson DA, Somers KM (2003) Giving meaningful interpretation to ordination axes: Assessing loading significance in Principal Component Analysis. Ecology 84(9):2347–2363. https://doi.org/10.1890/00-0634
Programa General de Desarrollo del Distrito Federal 2013–2018 (2013) (Development Plan of Mexico City). Gaceta Oficial del Distrito Federal. https://servidoresx3.finanzas.cdmx.gob.mx/documentos/ProgGralDesarrollo_2013_2018.pdf
R Foundation Core Team (2019) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna
RapidEye (2012) Satellite imagery product specifications. https://assets.planet.com/docs/1601.RapidEye.Image.Product.Specs_Jan16_V6.1_ENG.pdf. Accessed in 2015.
Revelle W (2019). psych: Procedures for Psychological, Psychometric, and Personality Research. Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. R package version 1.9.12. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psych
Rousseeuw PJ (1987) Silhouettes: A graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 20(53–65). https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-0427(87)90125-7
Samson R, Moretti M, Amorim JH et al (2019) Towards an integrative approach to evaluate the environmental ecosystem services provided by urban forests. J for Res 30(6):1981–1996. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-019-00916-x
SEDUVI (2003) Programa general de desarrollo urbano del Distrito Federal. Secretaría de Desarrollo y Vivienda, Mexico City https://www.seduvi.cdmx.gob.mx/storage/app/uploads/public/57c/eeb/f74/57ceebf7416f6408957691.pdf
Schmidtlein S, Tichý L, Feilhauer H, Faude U (2010) A brute-force approach to vegetation classification. J Veg Sci 21(6):1162–1171. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1654-1103.2010.01221.x
Simberloff D (2011) Non-natives: 141 scientists object. Nature 475:36. https://doi.org/10.1038/475036a
Sjöman H, Morgenrothc J, Sjöman JD, Sæbø A, Kowarik I (2016) Diversification of the urban forest–Can we afford to exclude exotic tree species? Urban For Urban Green 18:237–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.06.011
Steenberg JWN, Millward AA, Duinker PN, Nowak DJ, Robinson PJ (2015) Neighbourhood-scale urban forest ecosystem classification. J Environ Manag 16:134–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.08.008
Stewart GH, Ignatieva ME, Meurk CD et al (2009) URban Biotopes of Aotearoa New Zealand (URBANZ) (I): composition and diversity of temperate urban lawns in Christchurch. Urban Ecosyst 12:233–248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-009-0098-7
Sudha P, Ravindranath NH (2000) A study of Bangalore urban forest. Landsc Urban Plan 47:47–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(99)00067-5
Sukopp H, Weiler S (1988) Biotope mapping and nature conservation strategies in urban areas of the Federal Republic of Germany. Landsc Urban Plan 15:39–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-2046(88)90015-1
Taubenböck H, Esch T, Wurm M et al (2008) Urban structure analysis of mega city Mexico City using multisensoral remote sensing data. In: Michel U, Civco DL, Hermann ME, Kaufmann J (eds) Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring, GIS Applications, and Geology VIII. Cardiff. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.800272
Tichý L, Chytrý M, Hájek M, Talbot SS, Botta-Dukát Z (2010) OptimClass: Using species-to-cluster fidelity to determine the optimal partition in Classification of ecological communities. J Veg Sci 21:287–299. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1654-1103.2009.01143.x
Tree Canada (2019) Canadian urban forest strategy 2019-2024. https://treecanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/TC-CUFS-2019-2024-Eng.pdf
United States Geological Survey (USGS) (2019) Landsat 8. Landsat Missions. United States Geological Survey, Earth Explorer
Velasco E, Perrusquia R, Jimenez E, Hernandez F, Camacho P, Rodríguez S, Retama A, Molina L (2014) Sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in a neighborhood of Mexico City. Atmos Environ 97:226–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2014.08.018
Vihervaara V, Kumpula T, Ruokolainen A, Tanskanen A, Burkhard B (2012) The use of detailed biotope data for linking biodiversity with ecosystem services in Finland. Int J Biodivers Sci Ecosyst Serv Manag 8:169–185
Wallace CS, Dale MB (2005) Hierarchical clusters of vegetation types. Community Ecol 6(1):1–18. https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.6.2005.1.7
Weber M, Bedê LC (1998) Comprehensive approach to the urban environmental status in Brazil using the biotope mapping methodology. In: Breuste J, Feldmann H, Uhlmann O (eds) Urban Ecology. Springer Book Archive, Berlin, pp 636–640
Wickham H, François R, Henry L, Müller K (2020) dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation. https://dplyr.tidyverse.org
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Regina Ramírez, Hugo González, Jacqueline Hernández, Mariana Colores, Alejandro González, Edgar Barrientos, Ricardo Garduño, and Ivan Tovilla, for their assistance in field sampling. We thank Andrew Kenney, Paul Hess, and Patrick James for advising us various aspects of the project, and Carlos Galindo from Conabio who took the time to share his perspectives with us. The authors thank the numerous volunteers and donators who supported data collection and fieldwork, and INEGI for providing spatial data.
Funding
This work was supported by a study grant from the National Council of Science and Technology, Mexico (CONACyT) (Grant number: 407589), the Doctoral Research Award from the Canadian International Development Research Centre (Award number: 108544–022), the C.P Howard Scholarship Fund, and research assistantship funding from the Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to the study's conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by María Toledo-Garibaldi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by María Toledo-Garibaldi and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
This declaration is not applicable.
Competing interests
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Toledo-Garibaldi, M., Puric-Mladenovic, D. & Smith, S.M. Urban biotope classification incorporates urban forest and green infrastructure for improved environmental land-use planning in Mexico City. Urban Ecosyst 26, 323–336 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-023-01336-w
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-023-01336-w