Beyond the metropolis: Street tree densities and resident perceptions on ecosystem services in small urban centers in India (Anujan, Velho, Kuriakose, Ebin, Pandi, Nagendra)
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to Goa-Research-Net, Nandini Velho
Beyond the metropolis: Street tree densities and resident perceptions on ecosystem
services in small urban centers in India
Krishna Anujan*1
, Nandini Velho*1,2, Giby Kuriakose3
, Ebin P J3
, Vivek Pandi4
and Harini
Nagendra5
1 Columbia University in the City of New York
2 Srishti Manipal School of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru
3 Sacred Heart College, Kochi
4 Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal
5 Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
Abstract
The role of urban street trees has been extensively studied in large metropolises, where they
contribute significantly to faunal habitat, provide critical ecosystem services to residents and
contribute to human well-being. On the other hand, rapidly urbanizing cities in India have been
poorly studied, despite multiple types of irreplaceable losses related to tree cover. However,
being early in their urbanization history, these centers also represent opportunity for urban
sustainability with potentially high remnant vegetation and human-nature connections. While
megacities in developed countries move towards biophilic urban planning and participatory
decision making, basic information on tree communities and their perceived services is a
bottleneck in achieving these goals in such small urban centers. We assessed the street tree
community and resident perceptions of ecosystem service values in Kochi and Panjim, two
coastal cities in India under rapid development, through a combination of field measurements
(258 transects, 931 trees) and semi-structured interviews (497 individuals). We found that mean
street tree density is low in both cities, especially so in Kochi, and corresponds to perceptions of
recent change in tree cover (-28% in Kochi, -11% in Panjim). The street tree community in both
cities were dominated by ornamental avenue trees such as Albizia saman and Peltophorum
pterocarpum, but native coastal species like Cocos nucifera, Terminalia catappa and Thespesia
populnea were also common. Despite recent urban growth, residents in both cities reported low
value of trees for food, fodder and medicine, but high value for regulating services like shade
and water. Moreover, we found strong evidence for aesthetic and cultural values of trees in both
cities, including through qualitative interviews. Our study establishes critical baselines for
biophilic planning in these small urban centers towards urban sustainability.
Keywords: urban sustainability, small cities, ecosystem services, street trees