Phytoindication is an Effective Method for Accurately Determining the Lighting Intensity in Urban Parks

Abstract This study demonstrates the potential for utilising the phytoindication approach to ascertain the light regime of urban park plantations and evaluates the efficacy of the weighted average and ideal indicator methods for the phytoindication of light regimes. The study was conducted in two urban parks in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine. A total of 128 plant species were identified within the vegetation of the parks. A strong correlation was observed between the instrumental and phytoindication-based estimates of light intensity within the parks. The weighted average method yielded underestimates in comparison to instrumentally measured values across the range of light gradients from medium to high. The accuracy of the phytoindication estimates decreased monotonically with increasing number of species in the relevé, from 7 to 8 and above, and reached a plateau when the number of species exceeded 15. The expansion of hemeroby was observed to be correlated with an increase in the light intensity of the parkland, which is well explained by the Hill saturation curve. The natural urban park communities presented relatively lower light levels. This correlation demonstrates a linear trend.