On the urban ecology of Kuwait: Structure and function of public gardens

his exploratory investigation looked at the structure and function of a major urban habitat in Kuwait: public gardens. The diversity of herbaceous and woody plants and evenness in 8 gardens were assessed by Shannon diversity index and evenness index. The presence/absence of spontaneous vegetation was modeled in a binary logistic regression against predictor soil variables (pH, SOM, NO3, P, Mg, Ca, S, K). Aboveground carbon stocks were estimated by allometric biomass equations from the literature. Decomposition of buried litterbags was determined in garden and desert sites using leaves of Yucca data that were buried for 3 and 6 month periods. Overall, the diversity of plants was small with no more than 15 species at an individual garden. The diversity index was 1.3882 +/- 0.1770 while the evenness was 0.155825 +/- 0.047042. None of the estimated coefficients of the binary logistic regression for the predictor variables was significant (P> 0.05). This result was supported by Statistic G (G = 10.86, P = 0.21). The standardized mean of carbon (t/ha) was 17.85 +/- 13.46. The aboveground carbon stocks in Kuwait public gardens were estimated to be 5714 t with a monetary value of...