Nitrogen fertilization during planting and establishment of the urban forest: A collection of five studies

Today's urban forest increasingly consists of planted trees, especially as native forest fragments yield to urban sprawl. These trees are usually larger (over 2-m tall) than typical reforestation trees and grow very little for the first few years after planting. Stressful urban sites exacerbate this effect and many practitioners hope to shorten the time required to reach environmentally functional size by fertilizing at planting. This is a controversial practice since nitrogen (N) application creates the potential for water quality impairment and effectiveness is uncertain. It is not clear how nitrogen application affects large trees with radically altered root:shoot ratios or how nursery production methods and restrictive sites affect response. In a series of five separate studies, we tested several N rates on ten shade tree species (both field- and container-grown) and transplanted to a range of urban sites, from a relatively undisturbed forest fragment to a highly compacted cutover soil with an absent A horizon. Trunk diameter increase, as an integrative metric of tree biomass accumulation, was followed for up to 4 years on each experiment. Overall, we saw little effect from fertilizing at planting at any rate we tested, regardless of location. Three studies that included leaf analysis with a SPAD-502 chlorophyll meter indicated that neither SPAD meter values or N concentration within leaves was increased by fertilizing at planting, suggesting that the newly planted shade trees took up very little of the applied N. Overall, SPAD-502 readings correlated well with actual leaf N concentration (r=0.692). This group of studies indicates that fertilization at planting does not increase post-transplant growth, even in stressful urban sites and it is therefore not effective at shortening the establishment period of transplanted shade trees.