Analyzing roadside tree diversity reveals dominance, shadow diversity, and management archetypes: The case of Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines
Paper Details
Analyzing roadside tree diversity reveals dominance, shadow diversity, and management archetypes: The case of Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines
Abstract
Urban forests are vital for climate resilience in rapidly developing tropical secondary cities, yet their structure and diversity are rarely assessed at management-relevant scales. This study establishes the first city-wide baseline of roadside tree diversity in Tagbilaran City, Philippines, and diagnoses ecological patterns with direct management implications. A complete (100%) census of 1,176 roadside trees was conducted across all 15 barangays. Species richness, abundance, Shannon diversity, Pielou’s evenness, and rank-abundance distributions were analyzed. Chao1 non-parametric estimators were used to quantify latent or “shadow” diversity. Species richness ranged from 9 to 31 and abundance from 25 to 160 across barangays. A strong positive correlation was found between abundance and richness (r = 0.77, p < 0.001). Swietenia macrophylla King dominated the community, comprising 30% of all individuals, creating significant monoculture risk. Chao1 estimates revealed large gaps between observed and estimated richness in several barangays (Δ up to +19.5 species), indicating latent diversity potential from past plantings. Three management archetypes emerge: “Museum Sites” requiring rare species reinforcement, “Managed Stands” needing strategic diversification to reduce dominance, and “Novel Ecosystems” demanding stress-tolerant species introductions and soil remediation. Integrating complete inventories with dominance, evenness, and latent diversity analyses transforms raw data into actionable urban forest management strategies.
Archer D, Almansi F, DiGregorio M, Roberts D, Sharma D, Syam D. 2014. Moving towards inclusive urban adaptation: Approaches to integrating community-based adaptation to climate change at city and national scale. Climate and Development 6(4), 345–356. DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2014.918868
Aronson MFJ, Nilon CH, Lepczyk CA, Parker TS, Warren PS, Cilliers SS, Goddard MA, Hahs AK, Herzog C, Katti M, La Sorte FA, Williams NSG, Zipperer W. 2016. Hierarchical filters determine community assembly of urban species pools. Ecology 97(11), 2952–2963. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.1535
Brandt LA, Johnson GR, North EA, Faje J, Rutledge A. 2021. Vulnerability of street trees in Upper Midwest cities to climate change. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9. DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.721831
Chao A. 1984. Nonparametric estimation of the number of classes in a population. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 11(4), 265–270.
Cheung PK, Jim CY. 2019. Differential cooling effects of landscape parameters in humid-subtropical urban parks. Landscape and Urban Planning 192, 103651. DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103651
Conway TM, Vander Vecht J. 2015. Growing a diverse urban forest: Species selection decisions by practitioners planting and supplying trees. Landscape and Urban Planning 138, 1–10. DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2015.01.007
Cowett FD, Bassuk NL. 2014. Statewide assessment of street trees in New York State, USA. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 13(2), 213–220. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2014.02.001
Day S, Wiseman PE, Dickinson S, Harris JR. 2010. Tree root ecology in the urban environment and implications for a sustainable rhizosphere. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry 36(5), 193–205. DOI: 10.48044/jauf.2010.026
Dobbs C, Kendal D, Nitschke CR. 2014. Multiple ecosystem services and disservices of the urban forest establishing their connections with landscape structure and sociodemographics. Ecological Indicators 43, 44–55. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.02.007
Escobedo FJ, Giannico V, Jim CY, Sanesi G, Lafortezza R. 2019. Urban forests, ecosystem services, green infrastructure and nature-based solutions: Nexus or evolving metaphors? Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 37, 3–12. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2018.02.011
Esperon-Rodriguez M, Rymer PD, Power SA, Barton DN, Cariñanos P, Dobbs C, Eleuterio AA, Escobedo FJ, Hauer R, Hermy M, Jahani A, Onyekwelu JC, Östberg J, Pataki D, Randrup TB, Rasmussen T, Roman L, Russo A, Shackleton C, Solfjeld I, van Doorn NS, Wells MJ, Wiström B, Yan P, Yang J, Tjoelker MG. 2022. Assessing climate risk to support urban forests in a changing climate. Plants, People, Planet 4(3), 201–213. DOI: 10.1002/ppp3.10240.
Eungwijarnpanya S. 2001. Hypsipyla shoot borers of Meliaceae in Thailand. In: Floyd RB, Hauxwell C, editors. Hypsipyla Shoot Borers in Meliaceae: Proceedings of an International Workshop; 20–23 August 1996; Kandy, Sri Lanka. ACIAR Proceedings No. 97. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. p. 22–23.
Gotelli NJ, Chao A. 2013. Measuring and estimating species richness, species diversity, and biotic similarity from sampling data. In: Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. Elsevier. p. 195–211. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-384719-5.00424-X
Güneralp B, Reba M, Hales BU, Wentz EA, Seto KC. 2020. Trends in urban land expansion, density, and land transitions from 1970 to 2010: A global synthesis. Environmental Research Letters 15, 044015. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab6669
Hammer Ø, Harper DAT, Ryan PD. 2001. PAST: Paleontological statistics software package for education and data analysis. Palaeontologia Electronica 4(1), 9.
Hilbert DR, Roman LA, Koeser AK, Vogt J, van Doorn NS. 2019. Urban tree mortality: A literature review. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry 45(5), 167–200. DOI: 10.48044/jauf.2019.015
Laćan I, McBride JR. 2008. Pest Vulnerability Matrix (PVM): A graphic model for assessing the interaction between tree species diversity and urban forest susceptibility to insects and diseases. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 7(4), 291–300. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2008.06.002
Lapis EB. 2001. Hypsipyla shoot borers of Meliaceae in the Philippines. In: Floyd RB, Hauxwell C, editors. Hypsipyla Shoot Borers in Meliaceae: Proceedings of an International Workshop; 20–23 August 1996; Kandy, Sri Lanka. ACIAR Proceedings No. 97. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. p. 15–17.
Le Roux DS, Ikin K, Lindenmayer DB, Manning AD, Gibbons P. 2015. Single large or several small? Applying biogeographic principles to tree-level conservation and biodiversity offsets. Biological Conservation 191, 558–566. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.08.011
Livesley SJ, McPherson EG, Calfapietra C. 2016. The urban forest and ecosystem services: Impacts on urban water, heat, and pollution cycles at the tree, street, and city scale. Journal of Environmental Quality 45(1), 119–124. DOI: 10.2134/jeq2015.11.0567
Lovett GM, Weiss M, Liebhold AM, Holmes TP, Leung B, Lambert KF, Orwig DA, Campbell FT, Rosenthal J, McCullough DG, Wildova R, Ayres MP, Canham CD, Foster DR, LaDeau SL, Weldy T. 2016. Nonnative forest insects and pathogens in the United States: Impacts and policy options. Ecological Applications 26(5), 1437–1455. DOI: 10.1890/15-1176
Magurran AE. 2021. Measuring biological diversity. Current Biology 31(19), R1174–R1177. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.07.049
Morris KE, Caruso T, Buscot F, Fischer M, Hancock C, Maier TS, Meiners T, Müller C, Obermaier E, Prati D, Socher SA, Sonnemann I, Wäschke N, Wubet T, Wurst S, Rillig MC. 2014. Ecology and Evolution 4(18), 3514–3524. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.1155
Nagendra H, Bai X, Brondizio ES, Lwasa S. 2018. The urban south and the predicament of global sustainability. Nature Sustainability 1, 341–349. DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0101-5
Nielsen AB, van den Bosch M, Maruthaveeran S, van den Bosch CK. 2014. Species richness in urban parks and its drivers: A review of empirical evidence. Urban Ecosystems 17, 305–327. DOI: 10.1007/s11252-013-0316-1
Nowak DJ, Greenfield EJ. 2018. Declining urban and community tree cover in the United States. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 32, 32–55. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2018.03.006
Ordóñez C, Duinker PN. 2015. Climate change and urban forests. In: Routledge Handbook of Urban Forestry. 1st ed. London: Routledge. p. 336–350.
Pelser PB, Barcelona JF, Nickrent DL, editors. 2011–present. Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines. Available from: www.philippineplants.org
Purvis A, Hector A. 2000. Getting the measure of biodiversity. Nature 405(6783), 212–219. DOI: 10.1038/35012221
R Core Team. 2023. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Richards DR, Belcher RN. 2020. Global changes in urban vegetation cover. Remote Sensing 12, 23. DOI: 10.3390/rs12010023
Samontry X. 2001. Hypsipyla shoot borers of Meliaceae in Lao PDR. In: Floyd RB, Hauxwell C, editors. Hypsipyla Shoot Borers in Meliaceae: Proceedings of an International Workshop; 20–23 August 1996; Kandy, Sri Lanka. ACIAR Proceedings No. 97. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. p. 20–21.
Santamour FS Jr. 1999. Trees for Urban Planting: Diversity, Uniformity, and Common Sense.
Scharenbroch BC, Carter D, Bialecki M, Fahey R, Scheberl L, Catania M, Roman LA, Bassuk N, Harper RW, Werner L, Siewert A, Miller S, Hutyra L, Raciti S. 2017. A rapid urban site index for assessing the quality of street tree planting sites. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 27, 279–286. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2017.08.017
Tan PY, Wang J, Sia A. 2013. Perspectives on five decades of the urban greening of Singapore. Cities 32, 24–32. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2013.02.001
Thaiutsa B, Puangchit L, Kjelgren R, Arunpraparut W. 2008. Urban green space, street tree and heritage large tree assessment in Bangkok, Thailand. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 7(3), 219–229. DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2008.03.002
Van Do N. 2001. Hypsipyla shoot borers of Meliaceae in Vietnam. In: Floyd RB, Hauxwell C, editors. Hypsipyla Shoot Borers in Meliaceae: Proceedings of an International Workshop; 20–23 August 1996; Kandy, Sri Lanka. ACIAR Proceedings No. 97. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. p. 18–19.
Vogt JM, Watkins SL, Mincey SK, Patterson MS, Fischer BC. 2015. Explaining planted-tree survival and growth in urban neighborhoods: A social–ecological approach to studying recently planted trees in Indianapolis. Landscape and Urban Planning 136, 130–143. DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.11.021
Wickham H. 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Xiao N, Sun X, Liu G, Li H. 2023. Assessment of urban biodiversity: A case study of Beijing City, China. In: Shukla G, Bhat JA, Chakravarty S, Almutairi AW, Li M, editors. Floristic Diversity: Biology and Conservation. London: IntechOpen. p. 2.
Johnuel Tac-on, Jesie Diola, Noel T. Lomosbog, Jairyl B. Oclarit, MA. Aneli A. Lanzaderas*, 2026. Analyzing roadside tree diversity reveals dominance, shadow diversity, and management archetypes: The case of Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines. J. Biodiv. Environ. Sci., 29(1), 122-135.
Copyright © 2026 by the Authors. This article is an open access article and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.