Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

USDA Logo U.S. Department of Agriculture

Publication Details

Title:
Yards, block groups, and vegetation cover measures Data publication contains GIS data
Author(s):
Locke, Dexter H.; Ossola, Alessandro; Minor, Emily; Lin, Brenda
Publication Year:
2021
How to Cite:
If you use these data in a publication, presentation, or other research product please use the following citation:
Locke, Dexter H.; Ossola, Alessandro; Minor, Emily; Lin, Brenda (2021), Yards, block groups, and vegetation cover measures, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jdfn2z3bb
Abstract:
Residential yards are a significant component of urban socio-ecological systems; residential land covers 11% of the United States and is often the dominant land use within urban areas. Residential yards also play an important role in the sustainability of urban socio-ecological systems, affecting biogeochemical cycles, water, and the climate via individual- and household-level behaviors. Vegetation, such as trees and grasses, are unevenly distributed across front and back yards, and we sought to understand how similar yards are to each other when compared to their neighboring yards and neighborhoods using aerial imagery. There are many ways to measure yard similarity, and we compared several measures to account for different definitions of ‘neighborness’. We examined the spatial autocorrelation of several yard vegetation characteristics in both front and backyards in Boston, MA, USA. Our study area included 1,027 Census block groups (sub-neighborhood areas) and 175,576 parcels with matched front-backyard pairings (n = 351,152 yards in total) across Boston’s metropolitan area. This data package contains 1) 351,152 yard spatially-referenced yard polygons with five measures of vegetation summarized, 2) the containing block groups, and 3) and *.R script that replicates the analyses reported in Locke, D. H., Ossola, A., Minor, E., & Lin, B. B. (2021). Spatial contagion structures urban vegetation from parcel to landscape. People and Nature, 00, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10254

Keywords:
biota; boundaries; environment; location; planningCadastre; Geography; Urban natural resources management; Assessments; social and economic geography; residential vegetation; spatial autocorrelation; spatial contagion; urban ecology; urban forestry; Massachusetts; Boston
Related publications:
  • Locke, Dexter; Ossola, Alessandro; Minor, Emily; Lin, Brenda. 2021. Spatial contagion structures urban vegetation from parcel to landscape. People and Nature. 00: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10254
  • Ossola, Alessandro; Jenerette, G. Darrel; McGrath, Andrew; Chow, Winston; Hughes, Lesley; Leishman, Michelle R. 2021. Small vegetated patches greatly reduce urban surface temperature during a summer heatwave in Adelaide, Australia. Landscape and Urban Planning. 209: 104046. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104046
  • Ossola, Alessandro; Locke, Dexter; Lin, Brenda; Minor, Emily. 2019. Greening in style: Urban form, architecture and the structure of front and backyard vegetation. Landscape and Urban Planning. 185: 141-157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.02.014
Metrics:
Visit count : 184
Access count: 7
More details
Data Access:
World symbol which represents External data
  • View metadata (HTML)
  • Access data (available via external archive)

Need information about Using our Formats?