- Title
- Homestead greening is widespread amongst the urban poor in three medium-sized South African towns
- Creator
- Kaoma, Humphrey, Shackleton, Charlie M
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/398291
- Identifier
- vital:69398
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-014-0362-3"
- Description
- Trees in urban areas are important sources of ecosystem services and benefits. In most towns the bulk of urban biodiversity, and trees specifically, are found in homestead gardens. But there is only limited understanding of the tree holdings in such gardens, and how they vary within and between towns, especially for developing countries where rapid urbanisation and high poverty influence the use of and reliance on land and local resources. We report on the nature of tree holdings in private gardens of poorer suburbs in three medium-sized towns along a gradient of decreasing mean annual rainfall in northern South Africa. A total of 3 217 trees were enumerated across 450 randomly selected homesteads. Most (90 %) households had at least one tree on their homestead, with an average of 7.7 ± 6.1 trees. Most householders had planted the trees themselves. The density of trees declined along the moisture gradient. Within towns, tree density was positively related to garden size, which in turn was related to relative affluence and age of the suburb. Newer and poorer suburbs had the fewest trees per household. Sixty-two tree species were recorded, which were dominated by alien species, especially fruit trees. There was no relationship between the moisture gradient and tree species richness per household, but within towns there was a difference between suburbs, being lowest in the newest suburbs. Numbers of trees and species per household was positively related to age of the household head.
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (17 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- SpringerLink
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Urban Ecosystems, Kaoma, H. and Shackleton, C.M., 2014. Homestead greening is widespread amongst the urban poor in three medium-sized South African towns. Urban ecosystems, 17, pp.1191-1207, Urban Ecosystems volume 17 p. 1191 2014 1573-1642
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the SpringerLink Terms of Use Statement ( https://link.springer.com/termsandconditions)
- Rights
- Closed Access
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- Visitors: 109
- Downloads: 6
Collections
RU DST/NRF SARChI for Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods
Shackleton, Charles Michael (Distinguished Prof)
RU Department of Environmental Science
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Homestead greening is widespread amongst the urban poor in three medium-sized South African towns.pdf | 616 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |