Cities Benefit from Increased Tree Canopies

American Forests recently released its first tally of Tree Equity scores, a calculation that evaluates equitable distribution of tree cover in the United States. The Tree Equity Score (TES) tool identifies the cities that can gain the most significant health, economic and climate benefits by increasing tree canopy.

The 10 large-scale cities (with populations of more than 500,000) which would gain the most benefits include:

• Chicago
• Columbus, OH
• Detroit
• Fresno
• Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso
• Hempstead, NY and New York City
• Jacksonville, FL
• Los Angeles

Achieving Tree Equity nationwide requires planting 522 million trees coast to coast in metropolitan areas (places with more than 50,000 people). Doing so would sustain 3.8 million jobs and annually absorb 9.3 million tons of carbon – the equivalent of taking 92 million cars off the roads. As the trees mature, they would mitigate 56,613 tons of annual particle pollution.

“Our Tree Equity Score will help make us all accountable and create action at the local, state and national levels,” said Jad Daley, president and chief executive officer of American Forests. “It shows us exactly where the problems exist, where we need to concentrate investment to solve them, and where we need to bring people together – all different types of people and organizations.”

Daley asserted that the Tree Equity scores should play a significant role in helping shape government, private-sector and nonprofit policies, and funding for protecting existing trees as well as planting and maintaining new ones.