*corresponding author: xyhe_1828@163.com
Abstract: Street trees assemblage is a widespread natural component in
the cities and provides a wide range of ecosystem services to the
cities. However, the distribution of street trees assemblage within a
city is inequal. In this paper, we took air purification benefit
provided by street trees for example to examine how urban form, urban
geography and drivers of vegetation management affect the variation of
ecosystem services provided by street trees in metropolitan Shenyang,
Northeastern China. The i-Tree Street (2018) was utilizing to evaluate
air purification benefit provided by street trees. We analyze the
results using 2 indices: per kilometer benefit (PKB) and average tree
benefit (ATB). The results showed us that (1) both indices didn’t vary
along the population gradient. (2) The PKB had a decreasing trend along
the urban-suburban gradient. (3) The districts which had the highest PKB
and ATB are neither the old ones nor the newest one, but the districts
start to develop from around 2002 and 2003. Therefore, we infer that the
public policy is a main driver of vegetation management, especially for
street trees, because street tree is closely related to road/street
development which is closely related to economic development of a
region. Besides, there could be a time lag effect for ecosystem services
provided by trees.
Key words: urban ecosystem services, i-Tree Street, air purification,
population density, urban sprawl