Floristics of road forestry conflicting with the electrical networks: a case study in the southern region of Minas Gerais State

Abstract

Urban afforestation produces a great enhancement in the flora of cities, but if improperly implanted they generate disturbances, especially if the implanted species are not adapted to electric energy networks The objective of this paper was to carry out a qualitative-quantitative survey on urban afforestation through the interconnection with the electricity network in the five cities with most issues of electricity shutdown caused by trees in the South of Minas Gerais state At the end of the inventory there were 221 individuals belonging to 58 species, 56% of which were exotic and 44% native. Eight species counted for 51.99% of the total inventory, being: Jacaranda mimosifolia, Platanus acerifolia, Murraya paniculata, Lagerstroemia indica, Schinus molle, Ficus benjamina, Bauhinia variegata and Poincianella pluviosa. Only the species Schinus molle and Poincianella pluviosa are native. More than half of the inventoried trees presented a size incompatible with the electrical network, species of large (55.59%), medium (24.42%) and small (19.99%) sizes, to be implanted for urban afforestation. The selected streets had narrow widths, but the sidewalks had ideal widths for the implantation of afforestation. Treetop pruning was performed in 20% of the individuals evaluated, a practice that is widely used due to the presence of large species. The species evaluated in the inventory showed height ranging from 2 to 6 meters, not reaching their maximum potential when belonging to medium and large species. For the studied cities it is recommended a new evaluation of the urban afforestation, seeking to identify the appropriate patterns to the urban environment.

Urban Forestry in Mogi Guaçu, São Paulo State, Brazil

“…Three species with more than 10% of the population: Licania tomentosa (native) with 12.95%; Ligustrum lucidum (exotic) with 25.18% and Murraya exotica (exotic) with 19.74%, which corresponds to 57.87% of the population (Table 1). Similar results were found by other researchers in the number of species, predominance of exotic species and high frequency of few species (AVOLIO et al, 2018;BLOOD et al, 2016;MORGENROTH et al, 2016;NOWAK et al, 2016;OLIVEIRA et al, 2018;WANG et al, 2018). Worldwide, urban forestry is concentrated in some predominantly exotic species.…”

Biodiverse neighborhoods: an ex-situ conservation tool

“…The Anacardiaceae family is mainly utilized due to the fact that they provide edible fruits, which is widely known by the local inhabitants. However, species such as Mangifera indica and Anacardium occidentale L., from the aforementioned family, are not considered as adequate for urban areas like public squares and avenues, as the trees are too big, with long roots, present canopies with heterogeneous shape and might promote accidents with their fruits, which can cause damage to urban areas such as sidewalks, electric wiring and the obstruction of manholes, as well as the unpleasant smell of decomposing fruits (Oliveira et al, 2018;Silva et al, 2019).…”

Do internal roadways influence tree diversity and density in a reserve forest? - A reality check at BRT Tiger Reserve, Karnataka, India

“…In human settlement landscapes, non-forest woody vegetation represents an important component of green infrastructure in the agricultural areas, where natural and semi-natural forest cover has only a low land use proportion (Tóth et al, 2016). Urban afforestation produces a great enhancement in the flora of cities; but if improperly planted, they generate disturbances (de Oliveira et al, 2018). Street trees are a significant component of urban zones, which can remove a significant amount of CO 2 from the surroundings annually, equivalent to the removal of several thousand cars from the road (McPherson et al, 2016).…”