Before We Can Grow Tomorrow’s Canopy, We Need to Know Today’s Trees

A thriving community forest doesn’t happen by accident — it starts with neighbors coming together to understand what’s already growing around them. This year, commit to looking at your municipality’s tree inventory data if it is stored in the State’s databases. Is it current? Is it useful? If no data exists, could you be the one to start collecting it? 

While municipal staff and volunteers are the life force behind tree planting and care in downtowns and village centers, the Vermont Urban & Community Forestry Program holds onto much of a town’s historic inventory and planning data. Many historic tree inventories were conducted thanks to grants from our program; check out this list of the printed, bound reports we have on file and contact us if you'd like to retrieve one from your municipality. We launched our free and public Municipal Tree Inventory Tool in 2014, when 20 municipalities worked with our staff and received a technical assistance package to inventory their urban trees and create urban forest management plans. Since then, an additional 30+ municipalities, public educational institutions, and nonprofits have utilized our tool to inventory trees on publicly accessible property.  

Since the inventory tool was created, the technology that supports this tool has updated countless times. We’ve expanded the scope of what the tool can collect and played with ways to display data. Everyone can view tree data trends in the new Municipal Tree Inventory Dashboard or dive deeper into customizable maps and filtered data displays using the Municipal Tree Web Map Viewer. Later in 2026, we’ll combine these tools into an even better (and still free!) way to view, sort, download, and map your municipality’s tree data.

Reach out to Joanne.Garton@vermont.gov to learn more about how you can get outside this year to document trees in your community.