Scarce resources and outdated information have required us to scale back the data presented on the Tree Map temporarily. You can find more information about changes to the Tree Map on the FAQ page.

Knowledge of the urban forest — where the trees are, what species are represented, how old and healthy they are, the distribution of trees geographically — has great value for researchers, city foresters, ecologists, landscape architects, tree advocacy groups, and residents. But gathering this information, keeping it up to date and sharing it across organizations and governments is expensive and time consuming.

• Make use of the latest peer-reviewed science to present information on the ecosystem services that trees provide, demonstrating that the value of trees goes beyond the beauty they provide.
• Encourage citizen participation in the democratic process of monitoring, understanding and educating awareness about tree values.
• Encourage cities to maintain their municipal tree inventories, especially once they see the trees’ environmental value.
• Reduce the need for costly proprietary software by offering open-source technology that can work with existing systems.
• Allow urban planning departments to more easily understand and plan for the future health of the urban forest as it relates to city infrastructure, as well as integrating trees into their energy, carbon, water and air resource policies and management.
• Offer a low-cost alternative to cities that lack up-to-date technology or have tree inventories only on paper.
• Enable cooperation across multiple agencies, thereby improving coordination among different government entities.
• Encourage better understanding of the benefits versus costs of urban trees and encourage dialog for a progressive vision about the need to preserve and plant more residential, municipal and commercial trees.

The San Diego Tree Map is built on the open source OpenTreeMap platform. For more information on the source code or starting an OpenTreeMap in your community, click here.