Urban forest health monitoring: Large-scale assessments in the United States

Congress has tasked the US Forest Service with the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, which is intended to characterize and monitor the forests of the United States over time. Owing to the program’s definition of “forest,” however, urban forests are very underrepresented. To remedy this disparity, an Urban Forest Health Monitoring (UFHM) pilot program was developed to better clarify the conditions and composition of urban forests, changes and threats to this resource, the ecosystem services provided by the trees, and basic data (e.g., leaf area, tree biomass, species composition) needed to allow urban vegetation to be incorporated into state regulations. This paper describes the methodology of the UFHM pilot program, including plot selection, data collection variables, and the use of the UFORE software program for analysis. Results from the Wisconsin pilot study are presented.