MEASURING AND ANALYZING URBAN TREE COVER

Measurement of city tree cover can aid in urban vegetation planning, m anagement, and research by revealing characteristics of vegetation acr oss a city. Urban tree cover in the United States ranges from 0.4% in Lancaster, California, to 55% in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Two important factors that affect the amount of urban tree cover are the natural en vironment and land use. Urban tree cover is highest in cities that dev eloped in naturally forested areas (31%), followed by grassland cities (19%) and desert cities (10%), but showed wide variation based on ind ividual city characteristics. Tree cover ranged from 15 to 55% for cit ies in forested areas, 5 to 39% for those in grassland areas, and 0.4 to 26% for cities developed in desert regions, Park and residential la nds along with vacant lands in forested areas generally have the highe st tree cover among different land uses. Methods of measuring urban tr ee cover are presented as are planning and management implications of tree-cover data.