Tree Canopy
Continually increase urban tree canopy capacity to provide air quality, water quality and habitat benefits throughout the watershed. Expand urban tree canopy by 2,400 acres by 2025.
Progress
Recent Progress: Increase
In both 2022 and 2023, there was an increase in annual tree planting (454.7 and 2,577.4 acres respectively, up from 354.2 in 2021), with a particularly large increase in 2023. The 2,577.4-acre total in 2023 is the highest reported since tracking via the National Environmental Information Exchange Network began in 2014. This recent increase in progress is likely due to increased investments by Bay watershed jurisdictions in tree planting programs. The cumulative planting of community trees totals nearly 11,340 acres since 2014.
Outlook: Off Course
The Tree Canopy Outcome is off course from being met by 2025. The latest land use/land cover change data show a net loss of over 25,000 acres between 2013/14 and 2017/18, outpacing the gains from community tree plantings. While it may take 10-15 years for tree plantings to be reflected in the aerial imagery used for producing the land use/land cover data, the 11,340 acres planted so far are not enough to mitigate the losses. Much effort is needed to reverse the trend of net losses and achieve the net gain specified in the outcome. County level Tree Cover Status & Change Fact Sheets are available for the entire watershed to help inform local action.
Community Tree Plantings BMPs Reported (cumulative acres)
Since annual reporting began in 2014, a total of 11,340 acres of trees were planted in community areas across the region. This total includes three tree planting best management practices (BMPs) reported by the jurisdictions: urban tree planting, urban forest planting and urban forest buffers. Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which have most of the Chesapeake Bay watershed within their borders, have seen the most acres of tree planting BMPs in community areas. During this timeframe, 6,610 acres have been planted in Maryland, 586 acres in Virginia, 1071 acres in Pennsylvania, 38 acres in West Virginia, 54 acres in New York, 383 acres in the District of Columbia, and 21 acres in Delaware, respectively.
Another consideration to note with this data is that tree planting progress numbers reported for this outcome may be higher than the official progress scenarios from the Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool (CAST). To avoid double-counting, tree planting data are removed from CAST after 15 years to account for these acres’ reflection in land cover data. Since tree plantings and high-resolution land use/land cover data are reported as two separate metrics for this outcome, custom CAST scenarios were developed to track all new tree plantings reported each year, unaffected by prior years’ practice expirations.
Tree Canopy Net Change
While the overall trend of the watershed’s community tree cover has shown a decline between 2013/14 and 2017/18, some jurisdictions experienced a positive trend. New York and the District of Columbia reported net gains (78 acres and 21 acres, respectively) between 2013 and 2017, with New York showing net gains in that period that exceeded its annual goal of five acres per year. During this same period, Maryland reported the greatest cumulative community tree planting, almost 86% of the acres reported by all watershed jurisdictions (4,537 acres between 2014 and 2017), but also showed the greatest net loss (13,804 acres between 2013 and 2017). This demonstrates that robust tree planting and maintenance programs must be paired with conservation of the existing tree canopy to minimize losses and shift the overall trajectory towards gain.
The tree planting indicator will be updated every year with each jurisdiction’s reported tree plantings, while net change will be reported every four years as the land use/land cover data becomes available. This will create a necessary fluctuation in the reported data between gains and losses, along with the delay in newly planted trees registering in the land use/land cover data.
Management Strategy
To achieve this outcome, Chesapeake Bay Program partners have committed to:
- Supporting training and information-sharing within the urban forestry community.
- Helping partners determine how to develop and fund urban tree canopy programs.
- Expanding community engagement in urban tree canopy implementation.
- Supporting efforts to better incentivize tree canopy planting and protection.
- Supporting the development of watershed-wide high-resolution urban tree canopy data.
Monitoring and assessing progress toward the outcome will occur through data related to community tree plantings and gains or losses of tree canopy over time.
As part of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s partnership-wide implementation of adaptive management, progress toward this outcome was reviewed and discussed by the Management Board in February of 2023.
Logic & Action Plan
Chesapeake Bay Program partners have committed to taking a series of specific actions that will support the management approaches listed above.
Ongoing
- Implementing federal and state Inflation Reduction Act Urban and Community Forestry grants.
- Hosting a quarterly educational webinar series to build a tree equity community of practice.
- Implementing policy strategies from jurisdiction tree canopy action plans.
- Sharing County Tree Canopy Status & Change Fact Sheets and creating additional fact sheets at the municipal scale.
- Continuing a Chesapeake Goal Implementation Team (GIT)-funded project, Addressing Regional Tree Supply Challenges & Opportunities.
Recently Completed
2023
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Collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service, Chesapeake Conservancy, U.S. Geological Survey and other partners to develop County Tree Cover Status & Change Fact Sheets for the entire watershed.
- Convened a Tree Canopy Funding & Policy Roundtable for state and local leaders and held strategy sessions in each jurisdiction to create tree canopy action plans.
2022
- Collaborated with partners on updates to Capitalizing on the Benefits of Trees, Module 4 of the Local Government Guide to the Chesapeake Bay and produced two-page Tree Resource Guides for each of the Bay states.
2021
- Completed Trees and Schools: Growing the Connection guide to support collaboration across outcomes for tree canopy, environmental literacy and sustainable schools.
Participating Partners
The Forestry Workgroup, which is part of the Water Quality Goal Implementation Team, leads the effort to achieve this outcome. It works in partnership with the Vital Habitats Goal Implementation Team.
Participating partners include:
- Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (State of Delaware)
- Delaware Forest Service (State of Delaware)
- Maryland Forest Service (State of Maryland)
- New York Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Lands and Forests (State of New York)
- Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
- Virginia Department of Forestry (Commonwealth of Virginia)
- West Virginia Division of Forestry (State of West Virginia)
- Department of Energy and Environment (District of Columbia)
- District Department of Transportation Urban Forestry Administration (District of Columbia)
- Chesapeake Bay Commission
- U.S. Forest Service (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
- National Park Service
- U.S. Department of Defense
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- U.S. Geological Survey
- Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
- Cacapon Institute