City of Commerce Tree Canopy Prioritization

2011

This paper presents a set of Geographic Information System (GIS) methods for identifying and prioritizing tree planting sites in urban environments. It uses an analytical approach created by a University of Vermont service-learning class called "GIS Analysis of New York City's Ecology" that was designed to provide research support to the MillionTreesNYC tree planting campaign. These methods prioritize tree planting sites based on need (whether or not trees can help address specific issues in the community) and suitability (biophysical constraints and planting partners' existing programmatic goals). Criteria for suitability and need were based on input from three New York City tree-planting organizations. Customized spatial analysis tools and maps were created to show where each organization may contribute to increasing urban tree canopy (UTC) while also achieving their own programmatic goals. These methods and associated custom tools can help decision-makers optimize urban forestry investments with respect to biophysical and socioeconomic outcomes in a clear and accountable manner. Additionally, the framework described here may be used in other cities, can track spatial characteristics of urban ecosystems over time, and may enable further tool development for collaborative decisionmaking in urban natural resource management.

Arboricultural Journal, 2020

2021

Report completed by students enrolled in FNRM 4501/5501 - Urban Forest Management: Managing Greenspaces for People, taught by Dr. Eric North in Spring 2021.This project was completed as part of a partnership between the City of Woodbury, the Metropolitan Council, and the University of Minnesota’s Resilient Communities Project (http://www.rcp.umn.edu). The goal of this project was to provide recommendations on how the City can equitably increase its tree canopy coverage and update its approved tree species list. City of Woodbury project lead Kristin Seaman collaborated with students in Eric North’s course, FNRM 4501/5501 - Urban Forest Management: Managing Greenspaces for People, to assess Woodbury's current tree canopy, investigate how it could be equitably expanded in the future, and provide analysis and recommendations for the City to incorporate into their updated tree canopy plan. Final student reports and presentations are available. A videorecording of the students' fi...

Landscape and Urban Planning, 1996

Measurement of city tree cover can aid in urban vegetation planning, management, and research by revealing characteristics of vegetation across a city. Urban tree cover In the United States ranges from 0.4% in Lancaster, California, to 55% in Baton Rouge. Louisiana. Two important factors that affect the amount of urban @ee cover are the natuwt environment and land use. Urban tree cover Is highest in cities that developed in naturally forested mas (31%), followed by grassland cities (19%) and desert cities (lo%), but showed wide variation based on individual city characteristics, Tree cover ranged from 15 to 55% for cities in forested a m . 5 to 398 for those in grassland areas, and 0.4 to 26% for cities developed in desert regions. Park and residential lands along with vacant lands in forested areas generally have the highest me cover among different land uses. Methcds of measuring urban me cover are presented as are planning and management implications of mecover data.

2013

Urban forests provide numerous ecosystem services. To quantify these services and guide management to sustain these services for future generations, the structure or composition of the forest must be assessed. There are two basic ways of assessing the structure or composition of the urban forest: Bottom-up approach. Field-based assessments to measure the physical structure of the forest (e.g., species composition, number of trees–typically used for strategic resource management or advocacy by connecting forest structure, functions and values with management costs, risks, and needs. Top-down approach. Assessments of canopy cover using aerial or satellite images–used to determine amount and distribution of tree cover, potential planting space and other cover types. These two approaches provide different types of urban forest information. The purpose of this guide is to outline the advantages, disadvantages and costs associated with various common assessment alternatives under these tw...

2004

Sustainability

Urban areas face challenges including vehicular emissions, stormwater runoff, and sedentary lifestyles. Communities recognize the value of trees in mitigating these challenges by absorbing pollution and enhancing walkability. However, siting trees to optimize multiple benefits requires a systems approach that may cross sectors of management and expertise. We present a spatially-explicit method to optimize tree planting in Durham, NC, a rapidly growing urban area with an aging tree stock. Using GIS data and a ranking approach, we explored where Durham could augment its current stock of willow oaks through its plans to install 10,000 mid-sized deciduous trees. Data included high-resolution landcover metrics developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demographics from the U.S. Census, an attributed roads dataset licensed to the EPA, and sidewalk information from the City of Durham. Census block groups (CBGs) were ranked for tree planting according to single and multip...

Cities and the Environment

Considerable attention has been paid to the benefits that urban trees provide and recent research has focused on how the distribution of trees in the urban landscape is affected by socioeconomic processes like social stratification, as indicated by associations with income, race, ethnicity, and education. These studies have found marked disparity in urban canopy cover, with primarily low income and minority neighborhoods commonly being underserved. However, few studies have investigated the potential to overcome urban canopy inequities through urban planning and reforestation. This question becomes even more important as many U.S. cities pledge to increase urban canopy cover as part of larger climate change mitigation strategies. Can today's heavily developed U.S. cities use these tree planting initiatives to increase equity in urban canopy cover while still providing the infrastructure and housing necessary for expected population growth? This case study characterizes the socioeconomic drivers of the current urban canopy cover in Boston, Massachusetts, and further explores the possibility of distributing trees to increase equitable access to environmental justice and ecosystem services, while meeting housing and infrastructure needs. Results suggest that even when tree planting initiatives focus specifically on increasing canopy cover for environmental justice communities, equitable distribution of urban trees is difficult to achieve. Our findings indicate that difficulties arise not only from the expected policy and funding aspects, but also from ecological ones, including the physical availability of tree planting sites in environmental justice communities. Keywords environmental justice, urban trees, urban canopy, ecosystem services This special topic article: urban long-term research area exploratory awards (ultra-ex) is available in Cities and the Environment (CATE): http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cate/vol7/iss1/2 Danford et al.: achieving equitable urban tree canopy distribution Published by

staff of the Southwest Florida Water Management District for providing aerial imagery and LiDAR data; we want to express our appreciation to private land owners, homeowners and businesses for allowing us to access their property.

2015

and People Foundation, and other local NGOs. This project took concepts of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources' Strategic Forest Lands Assessment (SFLA) and applied them to an urban scale. The grant provided for a high-resolution tree canopy and land cover analysis of the city. Leaf-on IKONOS satellite imagery was obtained by the MD DNR for the entire city of Baltimore, Maryland for October 2, 2001. The ERDAS Imagine Resolution Merge application was used to sharpen the 4-meter multi-spectral data. A vegetation mask was created from the NIR-to-Red, (Band4:Band3) ratio image. A texture image of the ratio image was produced to separate tree canopy from vegetation pixels. The resultant vegetation and tree canopy bit-masks were exported to ESRI GRID files from ERDAS Imagine. Initial statistics generated from these GRID files show total vegetation (trees and other vegetation) as 47 percent, non-tree vegetation at 27 percent and tree canopy as 20 percent of the Baltimore land area. The Baltimore City Department of Planning will overlay in-house GIS layers of site types to establish baseline canopy cover. The bit masks were used in combination with other data reported by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA). The SUFA: Baltimore will serve as a long-term green infrastructure and planning template for Baltimore City and partners.