Keto,+Evan.

=Evan Keto= Urban Forester Town of Wake Forest



Master of Science in Forestry Graduation Date: May 2010

Advisors: Drs. George Hess & Melissa McHale Committee Members: Drs. Bronson Bullock & Gary Blank

Research project summary: Trees are often planted in parking lots to reduce the environmental and visual impacts created by these paved surfaces. The first part of my project consists of a review of the benefits of trees in parking lots. The second part of my project consists of an analysis of the composition and function of trees in parking lots in Raleigh, North Carolina. Using GIS, I estimated that parking lots cover approximately 10.9 square miles (5.97%) of Raleigh’s planning jurisdiction. Parking coverage was found to vary greatly between different zoning classes, with the greatest coverage in commercial and industrial areas. I measured more than 1,800 trees in 502 discrete planting areas within 110 parking lots, and used a two-phase cluster sampling scheme to determine the overall composition of trees and how this composition varied among different planting area types. This study provides a methodology for assessing the composition of trees in a city’s parking lots, which allows comparisons to be made among different types of parking lots, planting areas, and trees. Finally, I used this data to estimate the value of the ecosystem services provided by these trees.

In Press - Keto, McHale, Hess, Bullock, and Blank. Design Choices and Urban Forest Characteristics in Raleigh, NC Parking Lots. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry. http://joa.isa-arbor.com/articles.asp?JournalID=1&VolumeID=38&IssueID=1

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