After discussing with my partner we decided to finish what we started while taking extra precautions against COVID-19 concerns. The remainder of my blogs will focus on the project and no longer on Climate: A New Story. In order to finish before our presentation which is on April 29th, we had to cover a sizable portion of blocks to keep up with the schedule we made. To accomplish this we covered 12 blocks which consisted of blocks 1013, 1014, 1015, 1017, 1018, 1019, 1020, 1021, 2008, 2012, 2010, and 2011. Blocks 1014 and 1015 did not contain any public trees which will show on the Tree Plotter map. There were multiple blocks that had sides without any public trees at all like blocks 2008 and 2010. In total we documented 271 trees and in this section 59 of those trees were White Ash trees. In second place with 36 trees was the Kwanzan Cherry tree and the third most common specie in this section was the Pin Oak tree with 34 trees.
Out of the top 10 most common tree species in this area the White Ash tree made up about 25% of this list. I would also like to note that a significant portion of the White Ash tree population showed bark damage because of the Emerald Ash Borer larvae. This demonstrates how big of a problem the vulnerability of White Ash trees in South Orange is. The Norway Maple tree made it to this most common tree species list and considering that this tree is an invading species in South Orange this is a problem. Another side note is that some streets in this region have the same tree species located there like the Pin Oak or the American Sycamore. Below the data will be combined with our larger data set.
With this new added data we have recorded 623 trees and over 30% of the most common trees is an Ash tree like a White Ash tree or a Green Ash tree. The Pin Oak is found more often on streets that have heavier and faster car traffic. The other trees are more spread out among residential neighborhoods. The White Ash making up the majority of the most common trees in this area of South Orange is alarming because it is such a vulnerable tree group. Hopefully this information can help maintaining the public trees in South Orange.