The Woodland Trust, in partnership with American Forests, has developed a tool to assess the tree cover in your neighbourhood.
It is well known that the presence of trees in a neighbourhood improves air quality. Trees reduce NO2 and other noxious gasses in the atmosphere and generate the oxygen we breath. They also provide shade and quieten noise, improve ecosystems and boost biodiversity.
Trees also help improve mental health. They induce calmness and alleviate stress, stabilise blood pressure, ease anxiety and depression, and provide opportunity for healthy, active lifestyles.
Trees contribute to the aesthetic value of an area. They create a sense of place, beauty and heritage. They create attractive environments where businesses want to invest and people want to live, work and play. They may even contribute to the value of your house.
Trees are good for our health and wellbeing.
Every community across the UK deserves equitable access to trees. The Tree Equity Score tool, helps assess the priorities for planting trees.
The tool uses new tree canopy data from Google and six climate, health and socioeconomic indicators to generate a score from 0 to 100 for most urban neighbourhoods in the UK. It shows that, in areas of lower tree cover, there is a direct link to more pollution and poorer air quality.
Thirty-four thousand neighbourhoods have now been assessed covering 53 million residents. This is about 80% of the country’s population.
As might be expected, the assessment shows that poorer neighbourhoods have fewer trees that more affluent neighbourhoods.
This tool calculates a Tree Equity Score out of 100 for urban neighbourhoods. The lower the score, the greater the need for trees – a score of 100 means tree equity has been achieved.
Local communities can use the tool to campaign to have more trees planted in their area and local councils can use the tool to identify the neighbourhoods most in need of more trees.
The tool was created by American Forests, the oldest national non-profit conservation organisation in the USA. The Woodland Trust has applied the tool to the UK.
You can see the score for your neighbourhood using the tool here. Find your neighbourhood on the map and clicking on it will provide a report on the tree cover and six other indices.