Street Survey

Street SurveyIn the summer of 2007, the Forestry Division of the Department and Recreation and Parks organized a sample survey of the city’s street trees. 100 volunteers participated in training and surveying. Listed below are some of the facts we discovered.

  • Baltimore has approximately 100,000 street trees or 1 street tree for every 6 residents
  • Most of the trees sampled (68%) were located in residential neighborhoods and over half of those were in row house communities.
  • The street tree population includes ninety-five (95) different tree species.
  • The three (3) most dominant species are silver maple (12%), linden (10%) and norway maple (9%). Generally, maples (which also include sugar and red maples) are over-represented in our street tree population.
  • Over half of the environmental values are provided by seven species (based on tree structure and abundance): red maple, linden, norway maple, london plane, green ash, sugar maple, and silver maple.
  • Young trees are under-represented in the distribution by age. (Trees are most vulnerable during the first few years of their life).
  • 1,665 of the total population (2%) are dead trees and most of the dead trees are young.

Tree Baltimore(Baltimore’s sample survey included 500 randomly selected blocks). 
Information on i-Tree and STRATUM sample surveys can be found at http://www.itreetools.org
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