Increased home size and hardscape decreases urban forest cover in Los Angeles County’s single-family residential neighborhoods

Single-family residential neighborhoods make up large areas within cities and are undergoing change as residences are renovated and redeveloped. We investigated the effects of such residential redevelopment on land cover (trees/shrubs, grass, building, and hardscape) in the 20 largest cities in the Los Angeles Basin from 2000 to 2009. We identified spatially stratified samples of single-family home lots for which additional square footage was recorded and for which additional construction was not recorded by the tax assessor. We then digitized land cover on high-resolution color imagery for two points in time to measure land cover change. Redevelopment of single-family homes in Los Angeles County resulted in a significant decrease in tree/shrub and grass cover and a significant increase in building and hardscape area. Over 10 years, urban green cover (trees/shrubs and grass) declined 14–55% of green cover in 2000 on lots with additional recorded development and 2–22% of green cover in 2000 for single-family lots for which new permits were not recorded. Extrapolating the results to all single-family home lots in these cities indicate a 1.2 percentage point annual decrease in tree/shrub cover (5.6% of existing tree/shrub cover) and a 0.1 percentage point annual decrease in grass cover (2.3% of existing grass cover). The results suggest that protection of existing green cover in neighborhoods is necessary to meet urban forest goals, a factor that is overlooked in existing programs that focus solely on tree planting. Also, changing social views on the preferred size of single-family homes is driving loss of tree cover and increasing impervious surfaces, with potentially significant ramifications for the functioning of urban ecosystems.