TITLE:
Damaging Agents and Tree’s Health Condition in an Urban Forest
AUTHORS:
Luz de Lourdes Saavedra-Romero, Tomás Martínez-Trinidad, Dionicio Alvarado-Rosales, Patricia Hernández-de la Rosa, Jaime Villa-Castillo
KEYWORDS:
Damaging Agents, Urban Trees, Bleeding, Cankers, Galls, Health Categories, Damage Severity Index
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Forestry,
Vol.11 No.3,
July
6,
2021
ABSTRACT: Urban
trees are subjected to different damaging agents throughout their lifetime. The
aims of this study were to identify tree damaging agents, and to obtain a
Damage Severity Index (DSI) in order to categorize tree health condition at San
Juan de Aragon Park. Each tree was identified at species level in 28 randomly
established plots in ten sections of the study area. Up to two types of damage
were recorded per tree, based on the FIA (Forest Inventory an Analysis Program)
protocol, and a DSI was obtained for each damaged tree considering location of
damage, nature of the damaging agent and severity. A total of 753 trees were
assessed and 12 species and 27 damaging agents were identified. Cankers, galls,
the pepper tree psyllid and the red gum lerp psyllid were the most frequent
damaging agents. Australian pine, red gum, Mediterranean cypress, Mexican white
cedar, and California pepper were the most affected species. The DSI ranged
from 3 to 17 and the average was 7.9. Sections J and H and the species
California pepper, Australian pine, and Mexican white cedar presented the
highest DSI. The tree population had a moderate health condition, while the
aforementioned sections and tree species showed the poorest.