Diagnostic of urban trees in a section of Sancti Spíritus city

Abstract

The current research was carried out with the aim of diagnosing the situation of the urban trees in a section of Sancti Spíritus city. For this, an area of 25.39 ha was selected, where three plots were established, in which the inventory and classification of tree species in terms of taxonomy, origin, uses, type of location, state of development and phytosanitary was carried out, unrest problems were identified, and the volume of wood from those in the state of high trunk development was also estimated. In the studied section, 1 522 trees were counted, belonging to 59 species, 55 genera and 32 families, of which Fabaceae and Meliaceae were the best represented with 10 and 8 species respectively. Casuarina equisetifolia L. and Hibiscus elatus Sw. specified the largest number of individuals with more than 200 in each case. Timber species predominate (55.93%), of which 722 examples are in high trunk development state, with an estimated volume of wood of 711.280 m3 in general. 62.71% of the counted individuals are evergreen, and 49.16% correspond to autochthons species. Trees in groups predominate (63.4%); 85.28% have a good phytosanitary status while 61.76% need some type of silvicultural care. The main problems identified were location of trees in compact soils; damage to infrastructures caused by root systems and proximity to electrical and telephone wiring. Finally, some measures are proposed to contribute to the improvement of the identified problems.