Levantamento florístico das praças públicas de Natal

• Ano de defesa: 2020
• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, Ornela Silva
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; Brasil; UFRN; PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM CIÊNCIAS FLORESTAIS
• Palavras-chave em Português: Áreas verdes; Arborização urbana; Inventário
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/30911

Public squares are urban green areas which promote the appreciation of nature, offering opportunities to recreation, community interaction and heathy habits. The vegetation in public squares interacts with the population mental and physical health, acting directly mainly on shading and aesthetics of public spaces. This vegetation may present elements selected only for their ornamental value or act as a form of ex situ conservation and promote the environmental education of the public. Or even, It may contain elements of the remaining native vegetation, helping to connect the biota of fragments of native vegetation surrounding cities. However, the majority of Brazilian cities do not even have control over their urban green areas and may not have formal knowledge of its floristic composition, what would be essential to guide the decision making about pruning, removal, implementation or phytosanitary treatments. In this work, we aimed to expand the knowledge about the urban flora of Natal-RN through a floristic survey and census of the trees of 90 public squares of the South Zone of Natal. The exotic and native origin of species was distinguished and indexes and values were calculated and compiled to better understand the composition, spatial distribution and similarity to adjacent green urban areas. In total we accounted 28 families, 79 species and 4006 individuals. The most representative species were Cocos nucifera and Anacardium occidentale and the ones with greater absolute frequency were Mangifera indica, Azadirachta indica, Anacardium occidentale and Cocus nucifera. Our results show the list of species composing these green areas, the proportion of exotics and natives, the relative size of public squares, the number of individuals per area unit, the quantification of total green areas and usable green areas, the correlation calculated among these variables and the similarity between the vegetation of the public squares and areas of urban forests. This study highlights the great amount of exotics in urban spaces and the general bad condition of public green areas available for the population of Natal.