Urban trees are key elements for livable cities because they provide ecological, social, and economic benefits. Due to their importance, tree care should assure their welfare and ecosystem service provision. Among tree care strategies, pruning is highly controversial because it can be performed poorly, risking tree and human welfare. For the first time, we investigate whether the “luxury effect”, that describes a positive effect of human wealth on plant diversity, extends to urban tree care. In the Latin American city of Santiago de Chile, we sampled trees in 120 sites located in residential areas of different socioeconomic status. At each site, a trained forester evaluated each tree recording the occurrence and quality of pruning. We used a Generalized Linear Mixed Model with logistic distribution to estimate the probability of good pruning according to socioeconomic status. We found most trees (82 % of 510 trees) were pruned and most of them had poor corrective pruning applied. Good pruning increased with socioeconomic status of neighborhoods: 15 %, 31 %, and 54 % of pruned trees in low, medium, and high socioeconomic status, respectively. There was a significantly higher probability of finding well pruned trees in residential areas of high socioeconomic stratum than in lower strata. Our study reveals that trees in poorer zones are massively affected by the extended application of poor pruning that, in turn, risk ecosystem service provision for vulnerable people. Urgent strategies need to be implemented to prevent further tree damage in Santiago de Chile, especially in lower socioeconomic zones. Due to the widespread application of poor pruning on residential trees in our city and the paucity of local and global research on the relationship between socioeconomics and urban tree care practices, we make a call to investigate these patterns, especially in cities that exhibit social, economic, and environmental segregation.

中文翻译：

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基于社会经济地位的城市树木护理不平等


城市树木是宜居城市的关键要素，因为它们提供生态、社会和经济效益。由于树木的重要性，树木护理应确保其福利和生态系统服务的提供。在树木护理策略中，修剪是备受争议的，因为它可能表现不佳，从而危及树木和人类的福祉。我们首次调查了描述人类财富对植物多样性的积极影响的“奢侈效应”是否延伸到了城市树木护理。在拉丁美洲城市智利圣地亚哥，我们对位于不同社会经济地位的住宅区的 120 个地点的树木进行了采样。在每个地点，训练有素的林务员都会评估每棵树，记录修剪的情况和质量。我们使用具有逻辑分布的广义线性混合模型来根据社会经济状况估计良好修剪的概率。我们发现大多数树木（510 棵树中的 82%）都被修剪过，而且其中大多数都没有得到很好的纠正性修剪。良好的修剪随着社区的社会经济地位的增加而增加：低、中和高社会经济地位的修剪树木分别占 15%、31% 和 54%。在高社会经济阶层的住宅区发现修剪整齐的树木的概率明显高于在低社会经济阶层的住宅区。我们的研究表明，贫困地区的树木受到广泛应用不良修剪的严重影响，进而危及弱势群体的生态系统服务供应。需要实施紧急战略，以防止智利圣地亚哥的树木进一步受损，特别是在社会经济较低的地区。 由于我们城市的住宅树木普遍存在不良修剪，并且缺乏关于社会经济学与城市树木护理实践之间关系的本地和全球研究，我们呼吁调查这些模式，特别是在表现出社会、经济状况的城市中。和环境隔离。