Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Tree Health Condition in Urban Green Areas Through Crown In-Dicators and Vegetation Indices

Luis Manuel Morales-Gallegos
ORCID logo ,
Tomás Martínez-Trinidad
* ORCID logo ,
Patricia Hernández-de la Rosa
,
Armando Gómez-Guerrero
ORCID logo ,
Dionicio Alvarado-Rosales
,
Luz de Lourdes Saavedra-Romero
Version 1 : Received: 13 June 2023 / Approved: 14 June 2023 / Online: 14 June 2023 (04:07:08 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Morales-Gallegos, L.M.; Martínez-Trinidad, T.; Hernández-de la Rosa, P.; Gómez-Guerrero, A.; Alvarado-Rosales, D.; Saavedra-Romero, L.L. Tree Health Condition in Urban Green Areas Assessed through Crown Indicators and Vegetation Indices. Forests 2023, 14, 1673. Morales-Gallegos, L.M.; Martínez-Trinidad, T.; Hernández-de la Rosa, P.; Gómez-Guerrero, A.; Alvarado-Rosales, D.; Saavedra-Romero, L.L. Tree Health Condition in Urban Green Areas Assessed through Crown Indicators and Vegetation Indices. Forests 2023, 14, 1673.

Abstract

The urban environment induces stress on trees and the impact can be identified by observing the condition of the crown. The aim of this study is to correlate the variables crown density (Cdn), crown transparency (Ctr) and dieback (Cdie) with the following vegetation indices: normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI2), blue normalized difference vegetation index (BNDVI), green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI), green-red vegetation Index (GRVI) and red-green-blue vegetation index (RGBVI) of the tree crown located in urban green areas, as well as chlorophyll fluorescence (Fv/Fm) as an indirect indicator of tree health condition. A total of 549 trees were evaluated, represented in 24 families, 36 genera and 53 species; the variables had average values of 67.96 % in Cdn, 35.19 % in Ctr and 1 % in Cdie. Correlations were found between Fv/Fm, NDVI and BNDVI. NDVI and BNDVI correlated with variables such as Cdn and Ctr, mainly in species such as Ligustrum lucidum, Jacaranda mimosifolia and Fraxinus uhdei. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate tree health condition of trees in urban green environments through the identification of unfavorable conditions at the crown level by using vegetation indices for some of the species studied.

Keywords

urban trees; vegetation indices; chlorophyll fluorescence; forest health; crown density

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Forestry

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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