Landscape Evaluation Of Heritage Trees In Songjiang District, Shanghai

Heritage trees as the rare natural and cultural landscapes are valuable fortunes of one city. They have strong positive influence on people's impression to one city. Necessary efforts should be paid on their preservation and utilization, which has profound meaning in both city construction and tourism industry.In this thesis, we investigated the living condition, tree-environment interaction, tree-building interaction and landscape exploitation of heritage trees in Song Jiang District. On site photos were taken. The distribution of the heritage trees and surrounding buildings were documented in the form of layout plan. Based on the basic data of each tree (age, height, crown diameter, diameter at breast height), quantitative analysis on heritage trees in Song Jiang District were established using SPSS statistical softwares. The analysis included the study of the interaction between different types of landuse and the sum, age, size of heritage trees.Our investigation suggests that there are in total 219 heritage trees in Song Jiang District, whose location can be divided into 11 types of landuse—Inhabitation Area, Schools, Roadside, Public Utility Land, Religious, Enterprise Space, Green Space, Special Using, Arable Land, Rural construction sites And Timberland. Among these types, Timberland has the highest numbers of heritage trees and Public Utility Land is on the second; Green Space, public utility land and Religious have the heritage trees with largest size and age; Heritage trees in public utility land tend to have bigger crown diameter; Most heritage trees are with average height and narrow crown.On this basis, following both the basic steps of Formulaic Expert Method and the real situation of heritage trees in Song Jiang District, we modified the evaluating index, calculation methods and established an evaluation system suitable for the landscape evaluation on heritage trees in Song Jiang District.The modified formulaic method in this paper select the criteria to assess individual trees in detail based on six primary criteria, encompassing both intrinsic tree attributes and related tree-site and tree-human interactions, namely dimension, species, tree (specimen), condition, location and outstanding features. Elaborate the primary criteria into 45 secondary criteria, and allocate numerical marks to each secondary criteria. Every primary criteria carries the same weight in the ensuing computations, summing the six primary criteria Transformed Scores to form the Transformed Aggregate Score for each tree. The evaluation of 198 heritage trees in Song Jiang District based on modified formulaic method has the result as follows: the scores of 71 trees are under 60, 29 trees are between 60 and 65, 47 trees are between 65 and 70, the other 51 trees are above 70. More than one third of the trees have the scores under 60. Heritage trees in Song Jiang District are generally in low scores, which suggests that efforts to improve the landscape exploitation and to increase the tree size need to be done.According to the on site investigation and numerical evaluation of heritage trees in Song Jiang District, four aspects of heritage trees utilization in Song Jiang are summarized: First, protect and utilize each heritage tree; second, manage the relation between the heritage tree and its site and surroundings; third, conduct plans direct to each type of landuse for heritage trees preservation, which is in necessary to take it consideration of the difference in people and space belong to different types of landuse; Forth, considering the overall condition of heritage trees in Song Jiang District, develop a tourism program featured with heritage trees combining the various aspects of landscapes, culture and history of Song Jiang District.