SHADING OF TREE CANOPIES ON INTERTOWN ROADS THROUGHOUT FOREST LANDSCAPES: ABDİPAŞA-OVACUMA GREENWAY OF TURKEY

Abstract

Greenways are the systems that link both the urban and rural landscapes. Thus, they establish cultural and natural corridors between these landscapes. Being one of the major rural landscapes, forests supply ecosystem services by their recreation potential as well as wood and oxygen production. Hence, forest ecosystems that include roads constitute rural greenways. The canopies of the trees and shrubs supply shading on these road surfaces. These greenways play a significant recreational and safety role within the overall forest landscapes. They provide shading, recreation, and safety for both the drivers and passengers. Thereby, tree and shrub canopy parameters such as the closure and coverage are the determining factors on the safety, shading and recreation potential. Amongst those tree and shrub canopy parameters, the Leaf Area Index (LAI), Light Transmission (LT), Gap Fraction (GF) and Canopy Openness (CO) are the prominent ones. Therefore, the greenway route along the road between Ulus Subprovince (Bartın) and Safranbolu Subprovince (Karabük) at the northwestern Turkey, was chosen as the study and research field in this study. The oriental planes (Platanus orientalis L.) are the immediate roadside trees with their canopies shading on the surface of that road. Along 14 km road route, 71 different points were defined for the hemispherical photographing during the summer of 2021. Based on the analyses of these hemispherical photographs using the version 3.2 of the Hemisfer program, the LAI values ranged between 1.89 m2 m-2 and 2.79 m2 m-2, being 2.34 m2 m-2 on average. However, the average LT and CO percentages were 17.9% and 18.2%, whereas the average GF percentage was 7.7%. According to the overall results of this study, the canopy parameters indicated relatively high canopy closure and coverage values even though with alternating values and percentages for the different sections of the greenway route.

Keywords

• Tree Canopy
• Rural Landscape
• Forest Ecosystem
• Road Route
• Greenway
• Ecosystem Services

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