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 2024, annual tree planting in communities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed surged to 5,743 acres, more than doubling the 2,577 acres planted in 2023. This is the highest tree planting total reported since tracking began in 2014. Recent progress likely stems from increased investments by watershed jurisdictions in tree planting programs. Since 2014, watershed jurisdictions’ cumulative planting of community trees has reached approximately 17,082 acres.
Outlook: Off Course
The Tree Canopy Outcome is currently off course. Land use/land cover change data from 2021/2022 show a net loss of over 28,000 acres of tree canopy since 2013/2014. Although it may take between ten and fifteen years for tree plantings to become visible in the aerial imagery used to produce land use/land cover data, the 17,082 acres planted since 2014 are insufficient to offset these losses. Significant planting efforts are needed to reverse the declining trend and achieve the net gain specified in this outcome. County- and municipal-level Tree Cover Status & Change Fact Sheets are available to inform local action across the entire watershed.
Reported Community Tree Planting BMPs (Cumulative) (2014-2024)
Community tree planting data reflects plantings reported by watershed jurisdictions to the National Environmental Information Exchange Network (NEIEN) and includes three tree planting best management practices (BMPs): urban tree planting, urban forest planting and urban forest buffers. Since annual planting began in 2014, a total of 17,082 acres of trees have been planted in community areas across the region. However, community tree cover across six of the seven watershed jurisdictions has shown an overall decline, and tree cover in the District of Columbia has shown no net change.
Between 2014 and 2024, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which contain most of the land in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, have reported the highest number of tree planting BMPs: 10,357 acres have been planted in Maryland, 5,041 acres in Pennsylvania, 1,046 acres in Virginia, 449 acres in the District of Columbia, 112 acres in New York, 45 acres in West Virginia and 32 acres in Delaware. While Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York have surpassed their 2025 cumulative acreage targets, even these plantings are not enough to offset net losses in tree canopy acreage. This highlights the need for robust tree planting and maintenance programs to be paired with tree canopy conservation to minimize losses and shift the overall trajectory toward gain.
Tree Canopy Net Change
It is important to note that tree planting numbers reported for this outcome differ from the progress data reported on the Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool (CAST). Furthermore, due to changes in methodology, the 2024 edition of the Chesapeake Bay Program's land use/land cover data is not directly comparable to the 2022 edition used in a previous update of the Tree Canopy indicator. The 2024 edition shows a less significant loss of tree canopy between 2017/2018 and 2021/2022 (10,565 acres) than the loss between 2013/2014 and 2021/2022 (18,344 acres). This discrepancy may be attributed to differences in source data between the two time series, as the Lidar imagery used for the second change period (2017/2018 to 2021/2022) allows for better detection of tree canopy gains, thereby reducing net loss. More information can be found in the Tree Canopy Analysis & Methods Document.
The tree planting indicator is updated annually with each jurisdiction’s reported tree plantings. Net change is reported every four years as new land use/land cover data becomes available. This update schedule will result in fluctuations between gains and losses, as well as delays in the land use/land cover data’s inclusion of newly planted trees.
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 June of 2024.
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.
- Updating the County Tree Canopy Status & Change Fact Sheets and creating additional fact sheets at the municipal scale using the 2024 edition of the Chesapeake Bay Program's Land Use/Land Cover data.
Recently Completed
2024
- Completed the Chesapeake Goal Implementation Team (GIT)-funded project, Addressing Regional Tree Supply Challenges and Opportunities, which included convening an Urban Tree Supply Forum in August 2024. Project deliverables and Forum recordings are available on the Chesapeake Tree Canopy Network website.
- Convened a Chesapeake Bay Program webinar, Tapping into Community Stewards to Meet Your Tree Planting Goals.
2023
- 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