A study of Bangalore urban forest

The study is aimed to investigate the species assemblage in different land- use categories and the changes in vegetation over the recent yeats in Banga lore City, India. Forty-six sites of nine different land-use categories wer e sampled to study species composition, DBH distribution and end-uses of tr ees. Though species richness is high in all the various land-uses, a few sp ecies are dominant accounting for >70% of the tree density. Species richnes s is high in parks and residential areas. Tree density is high in parks, te mples and around lakes, where the land-use is recreational and low in comme rcial and residential areas, which have high built-up area, Bangalore urban forest is still young with most of the trees (70%), having <15 cm in DBH. The larger trees are in older establishments of institutions, offices, comm ercial areas and parks. The Kolmogonov-Smirnov test shows that there is a v ariation in DBH distribution in old and new land-uses of institutions and t emples. Among the tree owning households (50%) in residential areas, 40% of the houses have >5 trees and 22% of houses have >5 tree species in their c ompound. Trees in residential areas were sampled and studied according to the econom ic strata of residents and the age of the area. One hundred and sixty-four species were identified in different residential areas, of which 149 specie s were recorded within compounds and 87 species were avenue trees. The spec ies composition and cluster analysis showed that species choice varied in t erns of the economic status of the communities rather than that with time. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.