Tool Library

A curated index of digital tools and apps for urban forestry

Urban Forestry Toolkit

i-Tree Tools

i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban and rural forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools.

Community Assessment and Goal Setting Tool

Measure your urban forestry program against best practices and set goals for improvement.

STEW-MAP

The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a Forest Service tool that answers the question: who takes care of our environment? STEW-MAP surveys civic groups who work to conserve, manage, monitor, transform, educate on and/or advocate for the environment across a defined city, region, or landscape.

Trees and Stormwater

A closer look at how urban forests can help manage stormwater flows and pollution levels

Treepedia

Developed by researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab, Treepedia allows city dwellers to view the location and size of trees within their communities and to submit input to help tag, track, and advocate for more such trees in their cities.

Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities

This easy-to-use app from The Nature Conservancy enables you to become a skilled “tree steward.” It’s multi-faceted, but you may find its data-collection tools most appealing, and most useful. It tells you how to examine trees, assess their health and other characteristics. Then, it provides an easy-to-use form where you can enter information about individual trees in your neighborhood. Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities has 5 modules: 1. Tree Planting: Learn to properly plant the right tree in the right place because more trees mean cleaner air, fresher water, and safer streets; 2. Proper Stewardship: How to nurture and care for your tree by watering, mulching, weeding, staking, and creating tree beds; 3. Pruning: Ways to keep trees healthy and strong with hygienic and structural pruning; 4. Tree Health Monitoring: provides tools and information you’ll need to ensure your tree lives a long, healthy life with regular checkups; 5. Early Pest Detection: Protect your community’s trees by reporting signs of pests/diseases. Each module has supporting resources and videos to help you learn how to properly plant, care for, keep trees healthy for generations to come. Share the actions you take with your friends and family by sharing pictures of your newly planted tree or trees that you are caring for in your community by using social media. Keep track of your trees using the GPS and mapping functions integrated into your phone or mobile device. Become a citizen scientist and share your actions, your data, and your observations with scientists to help better maintain and protect the health of trees in your community.

The Urban Wood Workbook

Partners in Baltimore — including the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, Baltimore non-profit Humanin Room and Board and Baltimore non-profits Details and Bricks + Board, Quantified Ventures and others — created an urban wood-based economy in the city. The results were dramatic: reduced wood waste for the city, a sustainable stream of wood products, living-wage jobs for hard-to-employ offenders and drug users and a dramatic drop in recidivism. This workbook shares lessons learned in Baltimore in an effort to provide a framework to develop a sustainable supply and demand for urban wood nationwide.

Urban Forestry Funding Action Guide

We can’t guarantee that by reading this guide you’ll see grants pouring in. Things like that simply don’t happen. Fundraising is a complicated task – one that blends careful research, solid reputation and deep relationships. This guide will get you started, and help you across the finish line.