While trees might be a distant thought at this time of the year, the City of Providence is serious about the subject. Last year, almost 100 volunteers roamed the city with Palm Pilots to record the species, location, and dimensions of every street tree in Providence.
Mayor David N. Cicilline announced the initial results of the 2006 tree tally last June, citing the number of trees counted (24,999, including 409 dead trees), as well as the various species captured (more than 95, with Norway maples as the most popular).
Since all of the fanfare around the results, the city has been quietly refining the data and developing an online database of tree locations. “I use it every day,” said Doug Still, Providence’s city forester. The database, called the TreeKeeper, helps to track any time a tree is removed or planted as well as identify where trees are needed.
In the near future, Still says, he’ll post a static version of the database on city Planning Department’s Web site, so residents can see for themselves how trees are distributed throughout the city. Because the database is always changing, the map would be replaced with a new map every two or three months.
Residents might not be surprised by the results. “It’s pretty much what you’d expect; most of the trees are on the East side,” says Chris Nimmo, one of the city employees who refined the geographic placement of the tree tally results. At first glance, that is what the data reflects.
Blackstone is the neighborhood with the most street trees (3268 street trees, or 13.5 percent of the total). Manton is the neighborhood with the least (127 street trees, only .5 percent of the total). But after Blackstone, Elmhurst ranks as the neighborhood with the second-most trees, above College Hill, and way above Wayland. There are also dense pockets of trees in Elmwood and the West End.
Although the city is using the new tree data to make decisions about where to place new trees, tree distribution, Still says, is more than just a planting issue.
Where trees survive is a complicated mix of economic and ecological factors. He guesses there are more trees on the East Side because residents are more likely to have the resources to care for them.
The city also loses trees to outside forces like vandalism and car accidents. A research¬er at Cornell University is working on a study comparing tree coverage with socioeconomic data, and Providence is one of the cities included in his research. His analysis will be available sometime this winter.
Providence is also engaging in a more in-depth project of its own, called the urban tree canopy study. Consultants this fall will analyze satellite imagery to give a complete picture of how much of the city is shaded by trees. The data will break tree coverage percentages down by neighborhood as well as land use.