Ecological Indicators (Oct 2023)
Habitat heterogeneity explains cultivated and spontaneous plant richness in Haikou City, China
Abstract
Recent urbanization and human activities have led to the fragmentation of natural landscape patches and reduced the connectivity and degradation of urban ecosystems and biodiversity. Urban plant richness affects social functions and the well-being of urban residents and is driven by land use, local wealth, and urban green space management. Among these drivers, it remains unclear which factors play a more important role in driving the relative diversity of cultivated and spontaneous plant species richness in cities. Therefore, we investigated the spatial patterns and the drivers of cultivated and spontaneous plant species richness within 190 urban functional units (UFUs) in the tropical coastal city of Haikou, China, based on remote sensing data, fieldwork, and surveys of socioeconomic and greening management practices. Using multiple linear regression, we found that the most cultivated plants were located at colleges and universities, public affair service districts, and around hospitals, while the most spontaneous plants were found in transportation districts. The spatial organization of these plants was influenced by factors such as patchiness, connectivity, maintenance frequency and fertilizing frequency. Cultivated plants, conversely, were found to increase with patchiness and connectivity, and their presence was positively related to fertilizing and maintenance frequency. The richness of both spontaneous and cultivated plants was found to be influenced by various factors among different urban functional units (UFUs). The proximity to freshwater resources was found to increase the number of spontaneous plant species. Our findings underscore the significant impact of human activities on urban plant richness and highlight the importance of understanding these dynamics for urban planning and biodiversity conservation. Our work contributes to the scarce literature on the drivers of cultivated and spontaneous plant richness in recently developed tropical cities.
