Author(s)

Thomas Turnbull¹, Sharon Jean-Philippe¹, Raymond Albright¹, David Buckley¹, Sean Schaeffer², P. Eric Wiseman³

¹Department of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, US.
²Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, US.
³Department of Forest Resources & Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, US.

In the early 1940’s, during the early stages of the Manhattan Project (WWII), of rural communities in Anderson County, Tennessee was rapidly converted into laboratory facilities and the city of Oak Ridge. The environment that became Oak Ridge experienced not only pollutants from the laboratory activities, but also alterations from the land-use change from rural to urban areas. Therefore, a study was conducted to determine the impacts of land-use change from rural to urban area on 1) street tree diversity and performance; and 2) the biological, chemical and physical properties, and nutrient dynamics of street tree ecosystem soils. There were a total of 607 street trees, composed of 37 different species, on the five main roadways in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The street tree inventory revealed that the street tree ecosystems had a high relative abundance of Acer rubrum (21.91%) and Pyrus calleryana (19.93%). Chemical, rather than physical, soil and site properties in street tree ecosystems had the greatest impact on street tree performance. Soils differed street by street in their biological, chemical, and physical properties but were not influenced by traffic rates. There were also differences in soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC) during the winter on streets based on their diversity of trees; however, the most diverse street was among the lowest in soil microbial biomass. Seasonally, the winter proved to have not only greater amounts of soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen (MBN), but significantly less extractable organic carbon (EOC) and nitrogen (EON) and total labile carbon (TLC) than that in the spring. Overall, this study provided insights into the post urbanization impacts on the street trees, soils, sites, and nutrient dynamics within street tree ecosystems of Oak Ridge.

Street Trees, Soil Microbial Carbon, Soil Microbial Nitrogen, Tree Condition, Urban Forestry, Urban Soils

Turnbull, T. , Jean-Philippe, S. , Albright, R. , Buckley, D. , Schaeffer, S. and Wiseman, P. (2014) Investigating Land-Use Change on Street Tree Ecosystems. Open Journal of Forestry, 4, 467-480. doi: 10.4236/ojf.2014.45051.