Future Trees phase 1: Growing and exploring a digital forest

The management of urban trees has a massive influence on the liveability of a city. Climate change is impacting the sustainability of Adelaide’s urban forest, which is largely comprised of a small number of temperate zone species, some of which are unlikely to cope well with Adelaide’s trajectory towards a semi-arid climate. Urban planners have identified preserving and growing urban canopy levels as critical for Adelaide’s liveability, meaning that Adelaide must rapidly grow its canopy with plantings that are sustainable in the long term. Recent investments from local governments in tree data management systems and on-ground tree audits have provided a new opportunity to accumulate an urban forest database of approximately 600,000 trees. We are using this database to identify rarely-planted species suitable for increased planting efforts and to describe the demographics of the urban forest for the entire greater Adelaide region for the first time. This work will allow us to compare tree data with climate, infrastructure and social data to gain new insight into how our urban forest changes across the city; as well as identify vulnerable areas, target investment and provide a benchmark from which to measure the success of ongoing greening efforts.