The social processes contributing to urban environmental change: Indianapolis' inner-city urban trees, 1962--1993 (Indiana)

This research investigates urban environmental change as a function of the broader socioeconomic processes related to urban restructuring within the U.S. between 1962–1993. Specifically, this research investigates ecological changes in inner-city Indianapolis' urban tree canopy cover. This research is organized around the broad hypothesis that changes in household income have led to changes in urban tree canopy cover.; There are three foci within this research. The first seeks to determine whether or not Indianapolis' urban tree canopy cover significantly changed between 1962 and 1993, and to what extent. Secondly, this research seeks to understand how socioeconomic processes within a given residential population affect urban canopy cover change. The third seeks an understanding of the effects of these changes on environmental justice. The methods employed within this research follow and build upon current trends to link remotely sensed data with social scientific data. Census data from 1960 and 1990 were linked with land cover/land-use data from 1962 and 1993 aerial photography. Paired Student's t-tests and regression models were used to analyze the relationship between the socioeconomic and land cover/land-use data.; The results of the research indicate that there was significant decline over time in the urban tree canopy of my central Indianapolis study area. Median household income was shown to significantly explain changes in urban tree canopy cover and residential tree canopy cover. Socioeconomic factors helped explain approximately 50% of canopy cover change in these two models. It was found that the 1993 urban tree canopy cover was distributed inequitably along income lines within the study area. The statistical models explained 62% of the variation in the distribution of urban tree canopy cover and approximately 70% of the variation in the distribution of residential tree canopy cover.; Urban social processes and natural processes are intertwined within a complex web of socionatural dynamics, that are not purely social, and are not purely natural, but rather a synthetic mixture of the two. This research suggests that those processes governing change in the urban built environment also govern change in the urban socionatural environment.