Urban vegetation change after a hundred years in a tropical city (San José de Costa Rica)

Abstract

Urban vegetation is of key importance because a large proportion of the human population lives in cities. Nevertheless, urban vegetation is understudied outside central Europe and particularly, little is known about the flora of tropical Asian, African and Latin American cities. We present an estimate of how the vegetation has changed in the city of San José, Costa Rica, after about one century, with the repeat photography technique (based on a collection of 19 th and early 20 th century photographs by José Fidel Tristán and others) and with data from the Costa Rican National Herbarium. We found little vegetation change in the landscape of San José during the 20th century, where a total of 95 families and 458 species were collected in the late 19th and early 20th century. The families with most species were Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Poaceae, Lamiaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Solanaceae, Cyperaceae, Acanthaceae, Malvaceae, Piperaceae and Verbenaceae. Similar results have been found in Europe, where the number of plant species often is stable for long periods even when the individual species vary. Rev. Biol. Trop. 58 (4): 1367-1386. Epub 2010 December 01.

110 Years of change in urban tree stocks and associated carbon storage

“…). In contrast, a 5% decrease in urban tree cover occurred from the 1890s–2010 in San José, Costa Rica (Monge‐Nájera and Pérez‐Gómez ): a region that naturally has a high level of forest cover.…”

“…Such studies have rarely focused on urban areas, although Nowak () used historical photographs in combination with other historical documents to assess vegetation change in Oakland, California. Monge‐Nájera and Pérez‐Gómez () also used repeat photography to assess change in tree cover in San Jose, Costa Rica, but could only find nine suitable historical images.…”

Chapter 10. Trees have Already been Invented: Carbon in Woodlands

“…While woodlands and pastures are generally viewed as parts of wild or distant nature, in this chapter we emphasize the pervasive arboreal nature of even urban areas as critical sites of woody and other biota-based "carbon plus" environmental services. Just as an example, in a survey of over a thousand urban households in South Africa, non-timber forests products contributed 20% of household income [28,29,30], a finding hardly unique to South Africa [25,31,32,33]. Animal production is also often a considerable part of urban food production in cities, both in the developing world and the US [34,35,36].…”

A review of the genus Bulbothrix Hale: the isidiate, lacinulate, sorediate and pustulate species with medullary gyrophoric, lecanoric and lobaric acids, together with a world key for the genus

“…North America: Mexico (Hale 1976) and United States of America (Hale 1976, McCullough 1964, Moore 1968). Central America and Caribbean Sea: Costa Rica (Nájera et al 2002, Tenório et al 2004 as the synonym P. hookeri), Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Granada, Jamaica, Saint Lucy, Trinidad and Tobago (Hale 1976), Saint Vincent (Taylor 1847 sub P. hookeri). South America: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela (Hale 1976) and Brazil (?, Nylander 1885 [see comments below], Hale 1976;Marcelli 1987Marcelli , 1991Marcelli , 1993.…”