How do you decide where to plant a tree? With limited resources, many forestry organizations need to make every planted tree count. After all, trees have demonstrated economic, environmental, aesthetic, and health benefits that can enhance our communities and cities. But where to plant the trees in order to have the greatest impact?

With funding from a USDA Small Business Innovation Research grant, we’ve been experimenting with using heat maps to depict ideal planting locations. Based on that research, we’ve developed the Urban Forest Modeling and Prioritization Toolkit, a prototype web-based tool that enables users to generate heat maps identifying key planting locations based on selected factors such as population density, urban heat island temperatures, and health data.

While our prototype isn’t available for public use yet, we’re planning to discuss the research and show the results in an upcoming webinar to be held on June 28 at 1pm ET. We’ll be looking at the use of web-based tools for urban forestry modeling and our plans for future development on the project.

During this webinar, we’ll discuss:

– The types of data that can influence where you may want to plant trees
– How heat maps can be used to discover and explore prioritized tree planting locations
– How users can set and rank priorities for tree planting locations
– Options for comparing the long term ecosystem benefits for trees planted in certain locations

You can register for the June 28 webinar at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/754363942.  We hope that you’ll be able to join us. As we continue development, feedback from the community is essential and we would love to hear what you think!

If you can’t join us or have additional questions, please contact me at dboyer@azavea.com or visit our Urban Forestry Modeling website for more info.