Biography
Biography: Charles A Wade
Abstract
The urban forest is much more diverse than any surrounding natural forest in many parts of the United States. This “Created Biodiversity” is the result of the continuous introduction of new tree species to the urban forest. The three main driving forces behind this urban biodiversity are: Choices of people (based primarily on socioeconomic factors and the desire to plant “something different” in their yards), the heterogeneity of urban habitats where we have formed many new and different habitats that are not necessarily natural environments for native tree species, and the introduction of non-native species which are sometimes potentially invasive and leads to a change in the natural tree composition of the city. This created biodiversity is not a natural assemblage of tree species, but a makeshift community based on human desires and choices. A survey of the urban forest was conducted in 1980 in ten selected Midwest, USA cities. The survey was then replicated in six of these cities. The urban forest composition was then compared to natural forests in the vicinity of the original cities surveyed. It was found that the species richness was much greater in the cities, with 47 to 82 species, than the natural forests in the surrounding area of those surveyed cities which only had 18 to 23 species.