Jenny G. Research 1.1

Healthy soil is foundational to a healthy and resilient urban tree canopy.

Impact of Soil Properties on Urban Streetscapes. Jenny Ginn, 2024.

Understanding and managing soil properties allows urban foresters to support a healthy urban tree canopy. Urban forests and the soils that support them provide immense benefits for a city, including “carbon storage, climate regulation…water flow regulation, and recreational benefits” (O’Riordan et al., 2021).

My problem of interest is the management of urban forests through the management of urban soil health. For the purposes of this class, a proxy data set for exploring this system at its smallest scale could be any of the “Measurable Factors” of soil health listed in the diagram above. Soil pH, nutrient availability, and water infiltration are all factors used in monitoring urban soil health (Scharenbroch and Catania, 2012). Any of these factors may be monitored with an Arduino board.

The city of Eugene has over 76,000 public street trees and the city’s urban foresters would like to increase canopy coverage from 22 to 30% by 2030 (Urban Forestry, 2022). Monitoring soil health at the site scale rather than monitoring vegetative health at the city scale allows for preventative management rather than reactive management.

Great Urban Forest Mapping Tools:

Eugene Tree Canopy Equity Scoring: https://www.treeequityscore.org/map#11/44.0651/-123.1226

Eugene Tree Canopy Plotter: https://pg-cloud.com/EugeneOR/

Citations

O’Riordan, Roisin, et al. “The Ecosystem Services of Urban Soils: A Review.” Geoderma, vol. 395, 2021, pp. 115076-, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.115076.

Scharenbroch, Bryant, and Michelle Catania. “Soil Quality Attributes as Indicators of Urban Tree Performance.” Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, vol. 38, no. 5, 2012, pp. 214–28, https://doi.org/10.48044/jauf.2012.030.

Urban Forestry, City of Eugene, Nov. 2022, www.eugene-or.gov/3673/Urban-Forestry.