The City of Portland Is Trying to Map All the Trees In the City

Spoiler alert: There are a lot of them.

If you ever wanted to find every single tree in Portland but didn't know how, Portland Parks and Recreation Urban Forestry has a solution for you: a map of, you guessed it, (almost) every single tree in Portland.

The map, which is the result of Urban Forestry's Tree Inventory Project, is an almost freakishly specific guide to Portland's trees. You can type in any address and the map will show you all the trees located in that area.

The map even lists the trees by types. A quick search tells you that there are two yellow wood trees by Director Park, enough maple trees to cover nearly all of downtown and over 20 pear trees on SW Yamhill St.

To inventory Portland's trees, Urban Forestry has turned to volunteers. And because mapping hundreds of thousands of trees wasn't tricky enough, volunteers have been collecting information about the trees' species, health and size. Each November, the findings are presented at a Tree Inventory Summit.

While completing the Tree Inventory Project sounds as daunting clambering up a redwood with no footholds, the project's results are impressive. Over 218,000 trees have been surveyed with the goal both improving the health of Portland's existing street trees and finding spaces where new trees could have a home.

If you want to help out with the Tree Inventory Project, you can learn more about volunteering here. And if you want to collaborate with a Neighborhood Tree Team in the area where you live, Urban Forestry has a list of teams located across Portland.

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