Agenda Package - City of Vernon

American Forests: Setting Urban Tree Canopy Goals
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National Urban Tree Deticit
An estimated 634,407,719 trees are currently missing from metropolitan areas across the
United States as the result of urban and suburban development. These calculations are
based on American Forests'Urban Ecosystem Analyses conducted over the past six years in
ten select cities. Using satellite imagery, American Forests has been able to document the
decline of city trees in areas across the United States.
The National Urban Tree Deficit is the number of "average urban trees" we need in
metropolitan areas to bring the tree canopy level up to American Forests' conservative
recommendations. The average urban tree is defined as one having 133 square feet of
canopy cover.
Within urban areas of the 48 contíguous U.S. using Council of Government boundaries,
American Forests estimated the area of forest cover using classified satellite imagery. The
urban areas were then segmented by region to adjust for variation in natural forest cover.
The regional recommended tree covers were subtracted from the actual tree cover to
produce the total deficit area. Finally, the total deficit area was dívided by the area of an
average urban tree (133 square feet) which yielded a634,407,719 tree deficit in the U.S.
Suppoft for this study was provided by the USDA Forest Service, private corporations, and
fou ndations.
What You Can Do
o Plant a tree in your yard
o Encourage your community to plant trees on public space. Measure the benefits
provided by trees with CITYgreen and Regional Ecosystem Analysis
o Contribute to American Forests tree planting fund
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