Prioritization and Planning to Improve Urban Tree Health in the Chicago Region

A Chicago regional urban forest study published in 2013 provided a broad overview of the urban forest, yet provided little direction for specific work and prioritization. To fill this gap, The Chicago Region Trees Initiative (CRTI) has collected one of the largest data sets on urban forestry in the United States. This data informs where and how CRTI prioritizes its work, and has been incorporated into interactive online resources that communities and neighborhoods can access to help decision makers, landowners, and managers understand where and what to plant, the value of the urban forest, impacts of woody invasive species, heat island challenges, and where opportunities exist for oak ecosystem enhancement. The case study below describes how the data was collected, and how the CRTI and its partners us it to prioritize their actions in the Chicago region.

In a nutshell, this resource offers:

• A description of the data-collection process, including descriptions of partnerships and types of data collected.
• A process for taking spatially-explicit data and mapping it, using free and easy-to-use tools to make the results accessible to the public and practitioners.

How to use this resource:

• As an example of useful data to collect, and how to collect it.
• As a process to help prioritize communities with the greatest needs in your city.

Authors: Lydia Scott, Karen Ann Miller, Joseph McCarthy, Matthew Freer, Lindsay Darling, Melissa Custic

Date published:2020

Point of contact: CRTI@mortonarb.org

Citation: Scott, L.; Miller, K. A.; McCarthy, J.; Freer, M.; Darling, L.; and Custic, M. 2020. Prioritization and Planning to Improve Urban Tree Health in the Chicago Region. Cities and the Environment (CATE): Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 6.

Resource is available online here.