Arboreal Inventory of the João Pessoa Center, Paraíba

Abstract

The problems created by the urbanization process are making many cities to pay more attention to their arborization. João Pessoa, despite of being a very old city, has many green areas, having its urban trees established during 1950. The maintenance of urban afforestation requires its diagnosis and constant monitoring in order to guarantee the beauty and health of the trees, as well as the enjoyment of its ecological benefits.The aim of the study was to identify the arborization of the 12 main public streets of downtown João Pessoa, PB. The research was carried out from December / 2009 to August/2010, registering a total of 527 individuals, distributed in 32 species and 12 families. The 11 most frequent species correspond to 91% of the total population and 81% of them are exotic.  The most abundant species were Mangifera indica L. (24%) e Eugenia malaccensis L. (13%). The most frequent families were Fabaceae (27. 38%), Anacardiaceae (25.05%) and Bignoniaceae (16.7%). The avenue with the highest number of trees presented 62 individuals, while the lowest one was 7. Regarding diversity, the maximum number of species found per avenue was 11. About 39% of the trees were considered as big size. 35% of them had the first ramification above 1.80m. 55% have the DAP under 0.5m. It was concluded that the city has few trees along its central roads and most of them have characteristics that compromise the flow, indicating the need for a better urbanization planning.