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    • What do you have?

    Planning for the future of the urban forest starts with an understanding of the current state of the forest and its management. Knowledge of past practices and events is the key to understanding the present condition of the urban forest. By looking back, you can assess trends that have developed over time and factors that have influenced these trends.

    In this portion of the planning process, you will examine both what you have and how you got to your current situation. This can provide valuable insight into how to plan for the future.

    Assessing the urban forest

     

    Before you start to assess your current urban forest, you will need to answer several basic questions:

    • What is being measured? Determine the scope of what will be assessed (this should already have been decided as part of Getting Started > What/Where).

       

    • What is your vision for the urban forest? Although vision can be thought of as part of the "What do you want?" step, resources for developing urban forest master plans are not unlimited. The vision statement describes the future state of the urban forest. It can be helpful to have at least an initial vision for the urban forest to guide you in choosing the areas to include in the assessment.

       

      Organizations commonly develop mission statments in support of their vision statement. In the context of urban forest planning, a mission statement summarizes the role that a given organization or group has in helping to achieve the overall urban forest vision.

       

    • What information is needed? Consider the information that you are interested in. For example, what characteristics of the tree population (species, size, age, condition, planting site conditions, etc.) do you need to know? Your preliminary ideas about "what you want" will be helpful in deciding what information to collect.

       

    • What is the most efficient and cost-effective method to get the information? There is no substitute for data in evaluating the current status of the urban forest and the urban forest program. Anecdotal evidence is often biased in one direction or another. Data collected in a systematic, unbiased, and logical fashion will provide a sound basis for decision-making.

       

      There may be more than one method that could be used to collect some types of data. On the other hand, different assessment methods may be needed to collect the same kinds of data on different types of trees (e.g., street trees vs. open-space trees).

       

      This diagram of the assessment process shows how a wide variety of factors that affect the urban forest are analyzed separately before being linked together in the synthesis step. This synthesis allows you to identify issues, trends, and needs to address in your plan's goals.