RIVERSIDE – (INT) – Southern California has some of the most diversity of trees in the nation.

Los Angeles tops the list, according to tree survey data from 20 cities that was analyzed by a team of researchers led by a University of California, Riverside, landscape ecologist.

By combining datasets from 20 cities in the United States and Canada, the research addresses a little-studied area – how cities compare to one another in terms of plant species diversity and what drives variations in urban biodiversity across the United States.

Among the findings (the city name is followed by the number of species statistically adjusted to make up for variation in sample sizes):
· Four California cities top the list: Los Angeles (104), Santa Barbara (85), Irvine (77) and San Francisco (77).
· Position of larger cities in the United States varies greatly, from Washington D.C. (72) to Phoenix (52) to Chicago (51) to Boston (31).

Story Date: September 26, 2016