New Tools and Publicly Available Data to Help Assess the Status and Trends of Portland’s Urban Forests

The Urban Forest Inventory and Analysis (Urban FIA) program provides critical information on urban forests, including their composition, ecosystem services, tree size, health, mortality estimates, and future risk from insects and disease. In 2018, a full Urban FIA inventory was completed in Portland, Oregon in partnership between the Pacific Northwest Research Station and the City of Portland, Parks & Recreation Urban Forestry Division. Portland’s Urban FIA sample consists of 204 permanent field-sampled plots across public- and private-owned land. A subset of plots are remeasured annually, with complete remeasurement occurring approximately every ten years. Publicly available data is published through various applications. This presentation will highlight two tools, developed by Texas A&M Forest Service, that can help researchers, managers, landowners, and the public understand the status of Portland’s urban forest and monitor changes over time. The My City’s Trees application (https://mct.tfs.tamu.edu/) enables anyone to access Urban FIA data, produce custom analyses and reports, and summarize data within spatial themes. Portland’s spatial themes include land cover, zoning, equity (uses race and income to determine census tracts where marginalized communities reside), neighborhood coalitions, and heat islands. The Urban Forest Stats Tool (https://texasforestinfo.tamu.edu/urbanforeststats/) also provides access to Urban FIA data and more analytical flexibility, including using tree- and area-based filters, custom Structured Query Language (SQL) filters, land uses, ownership groups, and more. Results are displayed in tabular, graphical, and map outputs with an optional display of sampling errors and report summaries. These tools allow the power of Urban FIA data to reach broader audiences.