Abstract
Many studies have analyzed the benefits, costs, and carbon storage capacity associated with urban trees. These studies have been limited by a lack of research on urban tree biomass, such that estimates of carbon storage in urban systems have relied upon allometric relationships developed in traditional forests. As urbanization increases globally, it is becoming important to more accurately evaluate carbon dynamics in these systems. Our goal was to understand the variability and range of potential error associated with using allometric relationships developed outside of urban environments. We compared biomass predictions from allometric relationships developed for urban trees in Fort Collins, Colorado to predictions from allometric equations from traditional forests, at both the individual species level and entire communities. A few of the equations from the literature predicted similar biomass to the urban-based predictions, but the range in variability for individual trees was over 300%. This variability declined at increasingly coarse scales, reaching as low as 60% for a street tree community containing 11 tree species and 10, 551 trees. When comparing biomass estimates between cities that implement various allometric relationships, we found that differences could be a function of variability rather than urban forest structure and function. Standardizing the methodology and implementing averaged equations across cities could be one potential solution to reducing variability; however, more accurate quantification of biomass and carbon storage in urban forests may depend on development of allometric relationships specifically for urban trees.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Todd Wojtowicz and Krista Northcott for their priceless help in the field and lab. Sonia Hall, Sarah Hamman, and Molly Cavaleri were a source of general guidance in developing this project while the Colorado Tree Coalition was a source of inspiration, as well as a variety of forestry tools. We are grateful to the USDA Forest Service (Fort Collins Office) for loaning us the rare and endangered Barr and Stroud optical dendrometer. Mike Ryan and Scott Denning provided valuable input on several earlier versions of this manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose advice significantly improved this manuscript. This research was supported in part by funds provided by the Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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McHale, M.R., Burke, I.C., Lefsky, M.A. et al. Urban forest biomass estimates: is it important to use allometric relationships developed specifically for urban trees?. Urban Ecosyst 12, 95–113 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-009-0081-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-009-0081-3