Survey and planting potential of sidewalk afforestation on public streets in the urban area of Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil

Abstract

Urban afforestation provides a series of social, environmental, and economic benefits. Due to its importance for the quality of urban life, knowledge of the arboreal heritage offers subsidies for the public authorities to develop and improve management plans for urban afforestation. The goal was to survey the spatial distribution and estimate the potential for planting trees on streets in the urban area of Ponta Grossa, a medium-sized city in southern Brazil. Through visual analysis with the support of high-resolution images from the Pleiades sensor, as well as fieldwork in some places, it was estimated the number of trees per kilometer of road. It was observed 28,925 trees and the potential for planting 64,122 trees. Thus, there is a deficit of 35,197 trees. As it was obtained 22.52 trees/km on average, it arises a ‘very high’ level of attention. So, these data provide subsidies for the development of an urban forestation plan that contemplates street forestation.

Keywords

• arboreal indicator
• urban forest
• arboreal densification