2026/07/01 by Arleu Barbosa Viana‐Júnior, Arleu B. Viana‐Junior, João Carlos Pena +12
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Urban Green Space and Health #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
paper · doi:10.1111/btp.70244
ABSTRACT Although street trees may ameliorate the negative impacts of urbanization on biodiversity and improve cities' sustainability standards, they have been globally used with poor ecological criteria. In many cities, there is a notable lack of standardized assessments of street afforestation, particularly those outside major urban centers. Here we evaluate the distribution, richness, and species composition of street trees in 10 semi‐arid Brazilian cities, analyzing the proportion of native and non‐native species and the potential of these urban areas to support biodiversity. In each city, we sampled four 300‐m linear transects of woody vegetation along public roads and conducted a satellite‐based supervised classification to examine the relationship between species richness and the percentage of local impervious surface. A total of 1381 trees of 69 species were identified. About 80% of the individuals and 52% of the species were non‐native. More concerning, approximately 60% of the individuals belonged to exotic invasive species; the Indian Neem alone, Azadirachta indica , accounted for 700 individuals. As expected, the increase in impervious surface cover negatively affected the native species richness. Five cities were classified as antagonistic for biodiversity due to the high proportion and dominance of non‐native species. These findings reveal a concerning bias towards exotic invasive tree species in the studied Brazilian cities, potentially causing negative effects on the remaining urban biota. We strongly recommend that street afforestation strategies remove the invasive species from their portfolio, reduce the use of exotic non‐invasive ones, and increase the adoption of native trees as much as possible.