Evaluating the effects of turf-replacement programs in Los Angeles

Pincetl, Stéphanie; Gillespie, Thomas W.; Pataki, Diane E.; Porse, Erik; Jia, Shenyue; Kidera, Erika; Nobles, Nick; Rodriguez, Janet; Choi, Dong-ah

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.01.011

Cited by 33 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Finally, another contributing factor to the landscapes of Los Angeles has been inexpensive and abundant water. Studies have shown that with higher water prices, drought messaging, and turf replacement rebate programs, residents reduce landscape water use and are willing to replace their lawns with plants that use less water (Pincetl et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes

Avolio

Pataki

Jenerette

et al. 2019

Plants People Planet

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Societal Impact Statement People plant, remove, and manage urban vegetation in cities for varying purposes and to varying extents. The direct manipulation of plants affects the benefits people receive from plants. In synthesizing several studies of urban biodiversity in Los Angeles, we find that cultivated plants differ from those in remnant natural areas. This highlights the importance of studying cultivated plants in cities, which is crucial for the design and planning of sustainable cities. Residents have created a new urban biome in Los Angeles, and this has consequences for associated organisms, ultimately resulting in a responsibility for society to determine what type of biome we wish to create. Urbanization is a large driver of biodiversity globally. Within cities, urban trees, gardens, and residential yards contribute extensively to plant biodiversity, although the consequences and mechanisms of plant cultivation for biodiversity are uncertain. We used Los Angeles, California, USA as a case study for investigating plant diversity in cultivated areas. We synthesized datasets quantifying the diversity of urban trees, residential yards, and community gardens in Los Angeles, the availability of plants from nurseries, and residents’ attitudes about plant attributes. Cultivated plant diversity was drastically different from remnant natural areas; compared to remnant natural areas, cultivated areas contained more exotic species, more than double the number of plant species, and turnover in plant functional trait distributions. In cultivated areas, most plants were intentionally planted and dominated by exotic species planted for ornamental purposes. Most tree species sampled in Los Angeles were available for sale in local nurseries. Residents’ preferences for specific plant traits were correlated with the trait composition of the plant community, suggesting cultivated plant communities at least partially reflect resident preferences. Our findings demonstrate the importance of cultivated species in a diverse megacity that are driven in part through commercial distribution. The cultivation of plants in Los Angeles greatly increases regional plant biodiversity through changes in species composition and functional trait distributions. The pervasive presence of cultivated species likely has many consequences for residents and the ecosystem services they receive compared with unmanaged or remnant urban areas.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes

Avolio

Pataki

Jenerette

et al. 2019

Plants People Planet

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“…Additionally, we evaluated the effectiveness of turf replacement programs in LA County through work funded by MWD. We examined participation trends in MWD's 2014-2016 turf replacement program and developed a landscape classification typology using openly-available imagery to evaluate changed landscapes (Pincetl et al 2018). The findings from this project provide important context to understand whether turf replacement programs can be a successful strategy for promote landscape change and outdoor conservation to reduce urban demand.…”

Section: Study Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting Urban Water Systems to Manage Scarcity in the 21st Century: The Case of Los Angeles

Pincetl

Porse

Mika

et al. 2018

Environmental Management

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Acute water shortages for large metropolitan regions are likely to become more frequent as climate changes impact historic precipitation levels and urban population grows. California and Los Angeles County have just experienced a severe four year drought followed by a year of high precipitation, and likely drought conditions again in Southern California. We show how the embedded preferences for distant sources, and their local manifestations, have created and/or exacerbated fluctuations in local water availability and suboptimal management. As a socio technical system, water management in the Los Angeles metropolitan region has created a kind of scarcity lock-in in years of low rainfall. We come to this through a decade of coupled research examining landscapes and water use, the development of the complex institutional water management infrastructure, hydrology and a systems network model. Such integrated research is a model for other regions to unpack and understand the actual water resources of a metropolitan region, how it is managed and potential ability to become more water self reliant if the institutions collaborate and manage the resource both parsimoniously, but also in an integrated and conjunctive manner. The Los Angeles County metropolitan region, we find, could transition to a nearly water self sufficient system. Keywords Water scarcity • Socio-technical systems • Integrated water management • Water self-reliance

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“…Cities of extreme climates generally have lower species richness of urban trees and lawn vegetation compared to milder climates (Jenerette et al, 2016;Padullés Cubino et al, 2018). Within lawn communities, these patterns may arise due to differences in irrigation practices across cities, as well as differences in turf varietals (Kendal et al, 2018;Pincetl et al, 2019). Cities in more arid climates, such as Los Angeles and Phoenix, irrigate their lawns, while more mesic cities have both irrigated and non-irrigated lawns (Wheeler et al, 2017).…”

Section: Taxonomic and Functional Diversity In Recreational Park Vegementioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Climate and Management on Patterns of Taxonomic and Functional Diversity of Recreational Park Vegetation

et al. 2020

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Recreational urban parks support diverse assemblages of plants that through their functions, contribute beneficial services to billions of individuals throughout the world. Drivers of vegetation-derived services in parks are complex, as climate and park management interact with the functioning of multiple species of vegetation types. Yet, informal observations suggest that recreational parks are constructed consistently to specific principles of landscape design. Here we ask: what are the patterns of functional traits and vegetation diversity in cities of varying climate in the United States, and how do these patterns result in a consistent typology of recreational park? We hypothesized that increased aridity would exclude species not adapted to warm, dry climates, thereby reducing local, or alpha, taxonomic diversity and shifting community composition. However, a similar preference of park managers in the United States for suites of servicebased functional traits leads to similarity of mean values of services traits in recreational parks among cities, regardless of climate differences. We tested this hypothesis by surveying lawn species, comprised of herbaceous turf and spontaneous plants, and woody species in fifteen recreational parks across Baltimore MD, Riverside CA, and Palm Springs CA, three cities that contain multiple parks but differ in regional climate. With increasing aridity, taxonomic alpha diversity decreased and plant physiology shifted, yet no differences were observed among most service-based functional traits. Among the cities surveyed, no significant differences were observed in functional dispersion of woody and spontaneous species or most service-based traits. Taxonomic composition differed in each city for all vegetation types, while suites of service-based traits differed between Baltimore and the two more arid cities of Riverside and Palm Springs. Our results suggest that across the United States, service-based functional traits are consistent, even when arising from unique compositions and abundances of species in recreational parks. We interpret these results as an interaction between climate and the preferences of recreation park managers for services, creating a pattern of vegetation diversity where taxonomic alpha and beta diversity vary among regions while specific suites of services remain available.

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Evaluating the effects of turf-replacement programs in Los Angeles

Cited by 33 publications

References 44 publications

Urban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes

Urban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes

Adapting Urban Water Systems to Manage Scarcity in the 21st Century: The Case of Los Angeles

Influence of Climate and Management on Patterns of Taxonomic and Functional Diversity of Recreational Park Vegetation

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