Pine-ing for Equity – Measuring Neighborhood Equity by Counting the Trees

Trees bring huge benefits to the communities where they grow. They can help lower the temperature, clean air pollution and help lower energy bills. However, these benefits are not distributed equally among communities and trees are often scarce in poorer communities.

The Tree Equity Project which was started by a conservation non-profit called American Forests has an amazing goal of creating maps of tree cover all over the United States. They can then assign “Tree Equity Scores” to cities and counties that take into account many factors including population density to the unemployment rate to determine which areas would benefit most from tree-planting efforts.

Read this article to get more info about this project and why it is important for our future as it addresses climate change, jobs and opportunities to improve our world… First Step to Bridging the Urban Canopy Gap