National results indicate that tree cover in urban areas of the United States is declining at a rate of about 4 million trees per year, according to a new U.S. Forest Service study.
Tree cover in 17 of the 20 cities analyzed in the study declined while 16 cities saw increases in impervious cover, which includes pavement and rooftops. Land that lost trees was for the most part converted to either grass or ground cover, impervious cover or bare soil.
Of the 20 cities analyzed, the greatest percentage of annual loss in tree cover occurred in New Orleans, Houston and Albuquerque. Researchers expected to find a dramatic loss of trees in New Orleans and said that it is most likely due to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Tree cover ranged from a high of 53.9 percent in Atlanta to a low of 9.6 percent in Denver while total impervious cover varied from 61.1 percent in New York City to 17.7 percent in Nashville. Cities with the greatest annual increase in impervious cover were Los Angeles, Houston and Albuquerque.
The study was published recently in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, and is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866711000999
“Our urban forests are under stress, and it will take all of us working together to improve the health of these crucial green spaces,†said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Community organizations and municipal planners can use i-Tree to analyze their own tree cover, and determine the best species and planting spots in their neighborhoods. It’s not too late to restore our urban forests – the time is now to turn this around.â€
4 thoughts on ““Nation’s Urban Forests Are Losing Ground” and Albuquerque is among the worst!”
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I saw this too, and initially reacted strongly, as you did. But without having read the paper and doing any reporting (and therefore at the risk of responding with some ignorance), two additional mitigating thoughts occurred. First, I haven’t *noticed* a change in the city around me. So the loss we’re apparently seeing has not fundamentally changed the character of the city we love in a way that has affected me, at least yet. Second, in my water talk I give around town periodically, I’ve added a NASA satellite image showing vegetation in the region. Albuquerque jumps out because it’s so green – which, for purposes of my talk – is water we’re pumping out of the ground or the river and dumping on the ground for our pleasure. The message of the slide is that, to really come to grips with living in the desert, we’re going to have to do less of that going forward.
I call the collection of cell towers and transformers you can see on top of Sandia Crest the “urban forest.”
@johnfleck: Yeah, a cooler head would have said “And Albuquerque is reported to be among the worst.” I don’t entirely trust the methodology based on satellite photos. If “forest” really means trees, I think a significant part of the bosque would have to go for Albuquerque to be so bad — maybe the parts that have burned? On the other hand, “increase in impervious cover” is easy to see, especially on the West Side (not that it involved loss of much forest). // I’m especially worried about what happens when the elms finish dying. Altura, for one, will never be the same. // I’ll never forgive the assholes who plowed up the mature cottonwoods at Louisiana and Indian School (SE corner), leaving a barren patch for the next 2 decades (finally soon-to-be a megaTarget).
@cko: We know it as the Forest of Steel. FWIW, there is an Urban Forest Park (or was — it may have been renamed Tom Bolack Park), with neither steel nor forest.