Online tool allows Clark County residents to calculate their tree canopy

You can find out how leafy your neighborhood is compared with others with a new online tool.

The state Department of Natural Resources and American Forests, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, recently launched the tool. It shows the percentage of tree canopy for your home, street or neighborhood.

The mapping tool also analyzes tree canopy data in conjunction with demographic and other information to come up with a tree equity score, a measure of whether everyone has equal access to the benefits of trees.

The tool can guide landowners, government agencies, nonprofits and others in their efforts to expand and maintain treed areas. Users can also create scenarios to evaluate existing tree cover and available space to then calculate how many trees are needed to reach a targeted equity score.

These scenarios also provide information on the amount of stormwater runoff prevented, tons of carbon sequestered, and the amount and type of pollutants removed from the air.

The mapping tool is another important resource for local agencies and groups — including the Clark Conservation District, Friends of Trees and the city of Vancouver — already working to improve urban tree canopies.

“Tools like that, we do use when thinking about where we’re targeting the limited resources that we do have available,” said Adela Miller, arborist and neighborhood tree specialist for Friends of Trees.

Ryan Savaikie, Clark Conservation District’s urban forester, said the district collaborated with Clark County’s public works and parks departments for the first time last year to plant 500 trees in local parks.

“Now we have funding through Lower Columbia Fish Recovery board to plant between 50 to 80 trees in yards throughout the Hazel Dell neighborhood,” he said.

Savaikie said the district partnered with Friends of Trees, which is leading tree-planting efforts in the Hazel Dell area. That area is one of several communities included in the state’s list of overburdened communities, that is, areas at disproportionate risk from environmental hazards due to racial or ethnic minority status, low-income status, tribal affiliation, limited English proficiency or other socioeconomic factors.

Miller said Friends of Trees is also working with the conservation district to do tree plantings in the Cougar Creek watershed area.

“We’ve been in Clark County at large before, providing our services outside of just the city of Vancouver’s boundaries, but it’s always been very determined by the grant funding available to us. We’re excited to be returning to Clark County to do more plantings in the Felida and West Hazel Dell neighborhoods,” Miller said.

On average, urban neighborhoods have 33 percent tree canopy cover — the total area covered by tree canopy divided by the total land area of a location. The tree canopy in the Hazel Dell area ranges from 10 to 26 percent, while Felida ranges from 27 to 40 percent.

“A lot of the areas that lack canopy are also historically underserved or have higher numbers of people of color and things like that. So we do try to target those areas with our programming,” Savaikie said.

Friends of Trees has been organizing tree plantings and giving away trees to homeowners since the local chapter was founded in 2003. The nonprofit started by planting about 600 trees in the Cascade Highlands neighborhood, Miller said.

“The rest is kind of history. That led to us receiving a contract with the city (of Vancouver), and we started planting more widely. Since then, we’ve planted about 8,500 trees in Clark County,” she said.

Through its urban forestry program, the city of Vancouver has also worked to grow the city’s urban forests. Charles Ray, an urban forester for the city, said the program’s main focus in recent years has also been on overburdened areas identified in its five-year plan.

“We’re gearing up for our annual tree giveaway program where we have long-lived, climate-forward trees available for folks,” he said.

Ray said climate changes over the past several years, especially hotter and drier days that extend well into fall, are affecting native trees.

“Natives are not performing well due to climate stress, but we do include natives in the yard giveaway as well,” he said.

Ray said the city gives away an average of 80 trees each year, which is similar to what Clark Conservation District provides.

Along with some native species, Friends of Trees also recommends some nonnative species, such as a pear species from Iran that are better suited to this region’s changing climate, Miller said.

Trees can be pretty to look at, but Savaikie said their benefits go far beyond being aesthetically pleasing.

“One of the bigger things … is their importance for creating urban microclimates, decreasing temperatures in cities and things like that. They’re just really good at soaking up heat and giving you shade that a blacktop in a parking lot is not going to give you,” he said.

Savaikie said denser tree canopies are also great at soaking up stormwater runoff, pulling the water deep into the soil rather than sitting at the top layer.

“For homeowners, they can really reduce energy costs by having that shade so you don’t have to run your AC all summer, especially with the recent summers where it’s been a little drier and hotter than normal,” he said.