Status of Street Tree Inventories in the U.S.

Abstract

One of the problems faced by most city foresters is a lack of information about the trees that constitute their urban forest. Where and how many trees are there on city streets? How many specimens of each species are present? How old are they? Are they vigorous or do they need help? How tall are the tallest? What percentage needs pruning or other maintenance? Answers to such questions facilitate planning the maintenance, removal and planting of street trees. As part of a project to design and implement a tree-inventory system for cities, we investigated the status of urban tree-inventory systems in the United States.