scholarly journals Street Tree Inventory and Tree Risk Assessment of Selected Major Roads in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 226-235
Author(s):  
M. Sreetheran ◽  
M. Adnan ◽  
A.K. Khairil Azuar

Tree planting programs in Malaysia have progressed as planned. However, the subsequent management of the street trees, particularly at Kuala Lumpur City Hall, is not well undertaken due to inadequate information for management and maintenance purposes. There has never been a systematic tree survey conducted to inventory street trees in Kuala Lumpur. With this, a survey was conducted to collect comprehensive information on tree structure, species composition, species diversity, and tree defects and disorders. A total 2,191 street trees were surveyed.

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 701 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Roberts ◽  
Andrew Koeser ◽  
Amr Abd-Elrahman ◽  
Benjamin Wilkinson ◽  
Gail Hansen ◽  
...  

Urban forests are often heavily populated by street trees along right-of-ways (ROW), and monitoring efforts can enhance municipal tree management. Terrestrial photogrammetric techniques have been used to measure tree biometry, but have typically used images from various angles around individual trees or forest plots to capture the entire stem while also utilizing local coordinate systems (i.e., non-georeferenced data). We proposed the mobile collection of georeferenced imagery along 100 m sections of urban roadway to create photogrammetric point cloud datasets suitable for measuring stem diameters and attaining positional x and y coordinates of street trees. In a comparison between stationary and mobile photogrammetry, diameter measurements of urban street trees (N = 88) showed a slightly lower error (RMSE = 8.02%) relative to non-mobile stem measurements (RMSE = 10.37%). Tree Y-coordinates throughout urban sites for mobile photogrammetric data showed a lower standard deviation of 1.70 m relative to 2.38 m for a handheld GPS, which was similar for X-coordinates where photogrammetry and handheld GPS coordinates showed standard deviations of 1.59 m and the handheld GPS 2.36 m, respectively—suggesting higher precision for the mobile photogrammetric models. The mobile photogrammetric system used in this study to create georeferenced models for measuring stem diameters and mapping tree positions can also be potentially expanded for more wide-scale applications related to tree inventory and monitoring of roadside infrastructure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-43
Author(s):  
F.D. Cowett ◽  
Nina Bassuk

Pests, disease, and climate change pose major challenges to street tree survival, and diversity in tree species and genera is widely considered to promote the sustainability of municipal street tree populations. Conversely, the lack of sufficient diversity in street tree population was judged a contributing factor in the death and removal of thousands of street trees in Worcester, Massachusetts, that state’s second most populous city, due to an infestation of the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB, Anoplophora glabripennis). Therefore, reducing the dominance of prevalent street tree species and genera and increasing tree species and genera diversity are considered vital to sustainable street tree management and to the preservation of the ecosystem services and social benefits that street trees provide. This paper assesses street tree diversity in Massachusetts by analyzing a nonrandom sample of collated municipal street tree inventory data stratified by plant hardiness zones. Consistent with results previously found for Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, results in Massachusetts indicate that a relatively small number of species and genera dominate the composition of most municipal street tree populations, including in particular Acer spp. (maple), one of the ALB’s favorite host genera. There is accordingly a need for greater species and genus diversity in municipal street tree populations statewide. While there may be a trend towards increased street tree diversity and reduction in the dominance of Acer spp., considerable work remains to be done.


2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan André Alvarez ◽  
Bruna Cristina Gallo ◽  
Edlene Aparecida Monteiro Garçon ◽  
Osvaldo Tadatomo Oshiro

Campinas Metropolitan Region is the third richest city in Brazil. This study assesses the urban street trees of Campinas based on data from a survey performed using satellite images in the year 2011. All public domain trees in the street system were counted and separated into trees, shrubs, palm trees, and seedlings. The density of trees was obtained using the images census and expressed as trees per linear kilometer for the perimeter of the block. The number of trees per linear kilometer was grouped into nine classes of different densities for data validation. The final number of trees was estimated based on the validation’s results. The Gini coefficient shows that the number of trees per person is very irregular in city neighborhoods (i.e., Campinas has a fairer income distribution than street trees distribution). There is a lower density of trees in the downtown area, due to the high concentration of population, and in more peripheral neighborhoods, due to the lack of design planning. The results obtained here may be used to support a new setting of local priorities for planting actions aimed at urban forestry management.


2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-245
Author(s):  
Christian Nielsen ◽  
Oliver Bühler ◽  
Palle Kristoffersen

Soil water dynamics were studied in 100 street tree planting pits and in the soil surrounding five park trees. Volumetric soil water content and stem cross-sectional area increment were measured on both park and street trees. Different levels of irrigation were implemented on the 100 street trees. Winter assessments of soil wetness at field capacity showed that the water retention capacity was lower in street planting pits than in the park soil attributable to the rather coarse substrate used in the planting pits. High variability among street tree planting pits in regard to water retention capacity was determined and may be related to poor standardization of the substrates, but may also be affected by varying drainage conditions. The rate of water loss in the street tree planting pits was very high immediately after rainfall or irrigation and decreased exponentially during the first 10 days after water input. This was attributed to rapid drainage. The water loss rate in the park soil was on average slightly higher than in the nonirrigated control street pits but showed a more linear decrease over time. We concluded that the water loss in the park soil during summer was primarily driven by transpiration of trees (above 10 L/day [2.6 gal/day]), which complies with common Danish forest experience. The relationship between water loss and tree growth was reversed in the street tree planting pits. The street trees did consume water for growth, but growth and transpiration of the street trees were not a noticeably driving mechanism in the planting pit hydrology. The large variation in street tree increment is attributed to the variation among street planting pits in their ability to retain water. The faster the water loss rate, the slower the tree growth. Irrigation did not prevent final depletion of the soil water resource in planting pits, but irrigation elevated the water content for limited periods during the growing season and thereby enhanced tree growth. Besides the obvious possibilities for improved water balance by horizontal and vertical expansion of the rooting zone, we also suggest improving the water retention capacity of planting pit soil by adding clay nodules. Options for continuous monitoring of tree vitality and soil water content to optimize maintenance are discussed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dexter Locke ◽  
Lara Roman ◽  
Colleen Murphy-Dunning

Many cities are making substantial capital investments in urban tree planting. Residents play active and diverse roles in enhancing and protecting the urban forest, and are therefore critical to many municipal-level policy objectives. The way residents perceive and value the urban forest can have implications for achieving urban forestry goals through residents and volunteers. However, urban residents are not a monolithic block or homogenous category; instead, they have diverse opinions, needs, and constraints. Moreover, relatively little is known about how residents hear about available resources, such as free trees, and decide to ‘opt-in’ to tree planting initiatives, choosing to plant and maintain trees on or near their properties. The focus of this study was to address three questions about participation in a request-driven program that provides free street trees to residents of New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.: 1) Who requests trees through this program? 2) How did the requesters hear about this program? 3) Why did residents request free street trees? Survey respondents were primarily long-term residents of New Haven; mostly learned about the opportunity from their neighbors; and requested a street tree to replace a removed tree, because they value the aesthetics, and to a lesser extent the environmental benefits. Future research should systematically investigate differences between participants and non-participants in local tree planting initiatives, exploring possible trends across cities and programs. Such studies would identify opportunities and barriers to engaging private residents in efforts aimed at increasing canopy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 282-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucie Laurian

Planting rectilinear regularly spaced and low-diversity rows of trees along sidewalks is the dominant streetscaping practice in Western cities. Street trees provide shade, pleasant pedestrian environments, and ecological benefits. I interrogate the origin of this surprisingly stable practice by exploring the last 600 years of street tree planting in Paris. Paris’ iconic tree-lined boulevards have influenced streetscapes worldwide. This model of royal and imperial origins stems from, and reproduces, a complex mode of human–nature relations involving biophilia, the use of orderly nature as a symbolic commodity and, more recently, ecological stewardship.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-333
Author(s):  
Sonja Dümpelmann

The systematization of street tree planting in twentieth-century cities went hand in hand with the development of the modern city’s managerial system. In the systematization process, tree planting and care was serialized and standardized. To facilitate these procedures, tree locations and conditions began to be surveyed, planned, and recorded on paper. Focusing on street tree planting in East and West Berlin, this article examines the role of different paper formats, technologies, and representations such as lists, plans, maps, and index and edge-notched cards in the evolution of an increasingly regimented urban arboriculture. Paper was intricately related to both the life and death of the trees that it helped to document. As much as the malleable and variable nature and materiality of street trees contributed to an evolution of paper formats to capture the trees’ changeable conditions, so the use of paper to control, regulate, and systematize also contributed to standardizing trees, their planting, and their care.


Author(s):  
Fauziah Che Leh Et.al

This article provides a review of the indicators for safe urban tourism after evaluates the urban tourism concept which related to the tourism industry and the implementation of the safe city model towards the Malaysia urban area. This research uses the basic idea of a safe city model for proposing a conceptual framework in safe urban tourism. Content analysis is used to identify the principles indicators of safe urban tourism from the established literature, relevant reports and works. A theoretical framework of indicators for safe urban tourism was then formulated to be the main outcome of the study. The framework consists of a list of three groups (3) indicators of safe urban tourism which is (i) safe city factors, (ii) safe urban tourism factors and (iii) crime prevention strategies and step to be considered throughout the safe urban tourism development process. Given that research in safe urban tourism is still at its infancy and largely absent in the Malaysian context, this study aims to fill that research gap and contributes towards an existing scholarship. The theoretical framework is very useful to provide an essential guide to the stakeholders (Ministry of Tourism (MoT), Town and Country Planning Department and Kuala Lumpur City Hall) and researchers for formulating a clear guide of sustainability principles to be integrated into the development of future safe urban tourism in Malaysia.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Berland ◽  
Lara A. Roman ◽  
Jess Vogt

Street tree inventories are a critical component of urban forest management. However, inventories conducted in the field by trained professionals are expensive and time-consuming. Inventories relying on citizen scientists or virtual surveys conducted remotely using street-level photographs may greatly reduce the costs of street tree inventories, but there are fundamental uncertainties regarding the level of data quality that can be expected from these emerging approaches to data collection. We asked 16 volunteers to inventory street trees in suburban Chicago using Google Street ViewTM imagery, and we assessed data quality by comparing their virtual survey data to field data from the same locations. We also compared virtual survey data quality according to self-rated expertise by measuring agreement within expert, intermediate, and novice analyst groups. Analyst agreement was very good for the number of trees on each street segment, and agreement was markedly lower for tree diameter class and tree identification at the genus and species levels, respectively. Interrater agreement varied by expertise, such that experts agreed with one another more often than novices for all four variables assessed. Compared to the field data, we observed substantial variability in analyst performance for diameter class estimation and tree identification, and some intermediate analysts performed as well as experts. Our findings suggest that virtual surveys may be useful for documenting the locations of street trees within a city more efficiently than field crews and with a high level of accuracy. However, tree diameter and species identification data were less reliable across all expertise groups, and especially novice analysts. Based on this analysis, virtual street tree inventories are best suited to collecting very basic information such as tree locations, or updating existing inventories to determine where trees have been planted or removed. We conclude with evidence-based recommendations for effective implementation of this type of approach.


2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuti Haryati Jasimin ◽  
Hishamuddin Mohd Ali

The development of sustainable buildings continues to gain momentum in Malaysia due to its many benefits. The Kuala Lumpur City Hall stipulated that the construction of every commercial building must meet the requirements of green features with at least ‘GBI Gold’ level or equivalent. With the growing interest in green development, questions were raised on whether there is enhancement to the market value of green-rated properties and vice-versa. As most of the commercial office buildings are used for functions and office spaces by most organisations, they are considered a service oriented entity and can significantly benefit from having sustainability attributes. Hence, green properties are considered to be more marketable and attractive for investment purpose. However, at present, the differences in rental rates in Malaysia between green and non-green commercial office buildings are rather small. The difference is more to supply and demand factors within the specific location rather than green features factor. Therefore, this paper hopes to highlight the possible impact of economics, the environment and social attributes on the value of commercial office building incorporating with the Russian-Doll model. The highlighted sustainable attributes will provide guidance and justification in valuing real estate incorporating sustainability.


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