Chattanooga’s Urban Tree Canopy

Presented by Charlie Mix and Will Stuart from UTC:

As our urban centers continue expanding, we should be thinking about the critical services urban forests provide. Whether it's mitigating urban heat islands, connecting disjunct patches of fragmented habit, or providing communities with shade on a hot summer day, we simply need trees in our urban places. 

Chattanooga's annual growth rate has been steadily rising over the past two decades. Fueled by this accelerated population growth, more and more temperate forest ecosystems, places of enormous cultural, ecological, and recreational significance in the greater Chattanooga region and beyond, are destroyed to make way for new urban development.

Currently, Chattanooga is 52% forested. Using Planet Lab's 0.5-meter Skysat imagery, object-based classification, and machine learning, this research works to develop a high-resolution land cover map that asses the distribution of urban tree canopy across Chattanooga. Having a detailed understanding of a city's urban tree canopy is crucial in maintaining the services that trees provide to urban residents and the surrounding ecosystem, such as preserving the natural beauty and sense of place of an urbanized landscape, and mitigating the effects of anthropogenic climate change.

These data will be used by the City of Chattanooga Tree Commission in collaboration with green|spaces to address issues and identify solutions pertaining to tree equity, urban heat island effect, carbon sequestration, air and water quality, habitat fragmentation, and more.