ASU Research E-Magazine: Growing in Luxury

In urban and suburban areas of central Arizona, money appears to be just as important to plants as water and food. A team of researchers that includes several ASU scientists found that higher income level is associated with greater plant diversity.

This “luxury effect” is so pronounced that plant diversity at sites in neighborhoods with incomes above $50,750 per year were on average twice that found in landscapes of less wealthy areas. The researchers presented their findings in the online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July 2003.

“In human-constructed systems, it’s as if money is just as important to plants as nutrients and water supply,” says Diane Hope, a researcher in ASU’s Center for Environmental Studies and lead scientist for the survey.

“It’s not the money per se, because you don’t go and pour money on the ground and plants grow,” Hope says. “Rather, it’s the things that money enables people to do and the way that they live that affects the plant diversity in urban areas.”

The findings are the result of a large field survey and analysis of data gathered in the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research site, a major ongoing study to investigate the ecological characteristics of the Central Arizona-Phoenix region and how urbanization is affecting that character.

The results provide a comprehensive “snapshot” of the ecological characteristics of the Phoenix metro area and surrounding agricultural and desert lands. The survey will be repeated in five-year intervals to monitor long-term changes.—Skip Derra