Community Forestry & West Side Tree Planning
Wouldn’t it be great if the streets on the way to the park were cooler in the summer, making it easy to access from the surrounding neighborhoods?
West Side & Greater Wilmingon Tree Canopy Data
(Contributors: Nathan Ciabattoni, Parker Lehmann, Drew Martin,
Colin McFarland, Dr. Vaishnavi Tripuraneni.)
Environmental Science students at the University of Delaware partnered with Green for the Greater Good to develop an open, accessible data repository for Wilmington’s urban tree canopy.
Data repository content brings together GIS layers, census tract data, satellite imagery, and historical planning information to examine how tree canopy coverage and health relate to property values and demographic patterns across the city.
West Side Tree Inventory
Green for the Greater Good is teaming up with partners and residents to develop a West Side Tree plan to document what current challenges exist and identify what policies and resources are needed to care for existing trees and to sustainably increase the West Side tree canopy over time.
Do you have any thoughts about the value of street trees or the problems they cause? Do you have ideas about what can be done to make street trees a positive part of our community? Share your thoughts or sign up to get involved at this link.
Last summer, Green for the Greater Good partnered with students and professors from the University of Delaware to use the Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities tool to inventory and assess the health of street trees in the West Side.
Many thanks to Dr. Tara Trammell of UD's Department of Plant and Soil Sciences for organizing a training by her colleagues at the US Forest Service who created the HTHC process and tool and to professors and students of the Plant and Soil Sciences and Human Geography departments who participated.
Kyle Dennis, a senior in the Environmental Studies program, with support from his professor, Dr. Vaishnavi Tripuraneni, led a street tree inventory in the Hilltop neighborhood and analyzed the results.
Stay tuned for chances to learn more about this summer’s inventory, tools, Kyle’s findings and next steps!
Street Tree Inventory in Census Tract 22