The City of Baltimore, as part of their climate adaptation strategy, has pledged to double their tree
canopy by 2017 in the hopes of mitigating a variety of climatic hazards that are projected to worsen
in the future. These hazards include the length and magnitude of heat and precipitation events, sealevel
rise, and increased prevalence of extreme weather events such as tornados and coastal
storms. In keeping with this goal of forest expansion, one of the strategies (strategy NS-2) put
forth in Baltimore’s Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3) is to “increase and enhance
the resilience and health of Baltimore’s Urban Forest.” To help the City of Baltimore meet their
goal of successfully and sustainably expanding their urban forest, we have completed a five-staged
approach centered around the creation of an interactive spatial decision support tool: (1)
identification of urban forestry best practices and analysis of precedence to inform successful tree
selection and planting; (2) a review of existing urban forestry practices and policies in other cities
to identify cities leading the way on planning and growing a resilient urban forest and synthesizing
lessons, strategies implemented, and challenges in these locations, (3) the integration of the USDA
vegetation database outlining the preferred growing conditions and a variety of other attributes for
the majority of eastern hardwood species, with a spatial database that includes site-specific
environmental, situational, and risk factors; (4) the creation of a user-friendly interactive tool that
ranks trees from the vegetation database based on site-specific characteristics; and (5) beta-testing
of the tool with a variety of Baltimore stakeholders to generate buy-in, ensure its usability and
longevity as a solution, and provide recommendations for future iterations of this model.
Throughout the tool development process, we aimed to create an interface that is replicable across
other cities, given the amount of need we have identified for a tool of this caliber, specificity, and
integrated considerations. Based on beta-testing results with 17 stakeholders, carried out in
Baltimore in late March, 2015, our tool was well-received and supported, and we anticipate that
Baltimore officials will work to publically implement the tool in the coming months.