All the facts
296 figures, each one with the year it refers to and a link to its source.
- Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCanopy
The City of Sydney's tree canopy covered 15.5% of the local government area in 2008, the baseline for its urban forest strategy.
- Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCanopy
The City of Sydney aims for 23% canopy cover by 2030 and 27% by 2050.
- Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCooling
During a 2020 heatwave, Greater Sydney's night-time surface heat island intensified by about 4°C, while forests stored far less heat thanks to transpiration and albedo.
- Melbourne, VIC, AustraliaCanopy
The City of Melbourne maintains more than 80,000 trees in its urban forest, each mapped with species and dimensions in open data.
City of Melbourne Open Data, Trees with species and dimensions (Urban Forest), 2026
- São Paulo, SP, BrazilSurvival
São Paulo has about 652,000 street trees, and 7,034 of them fell over a three-year period, mostly during wet-season storms, pointing to the need for better pruning and root space.
Trees - Structure and Function 2022, 'Climate drivers of tree fall on the streets of São Paulo', 2022
- Toronto, ON, CanadaCanopy
Toronto's tree canopy covers about 28% of the city.
City of Toronto, Trees, 2026
- Toronto, ON, CanadaCanopy
Toronto aims to raise its tree canopy from 28% to 40% by 2050.
City of Toronto, Trees, 2050
- Toronto, ON, CanadaHealth
In Toronto, having 10 more trees on a city block improves residents' self-reported health as much as a $10,000 rise in annual income or being 7 years younger.
Kardan et al. 2015, Scientific Reports, 'Neighborhood greenspace and health in a large urban center', 2015
- Berlin, BE, GermanyCanopy
Berlin has more than 439,000 street trees, an average of about 80 trees per kilometre of city street (up from 73 per km in 1990).
Berlin Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and Environment, Stadtbäume, 2025
- Berlin, BE, GermanyCanopy
Berlin's street-tree stock fell from about 411,000 in 1939 to 161,000 in 1946 and has since been rebuilt to about 439,000, though heat and drought in 2018-2022 caused losses.
- Paris, IDF, FranceCanopy
Paris has about 100,000 street trees along roughly 700 km of roads, plus over 200,000 trees in parks and facilities and 300,000 more in the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes.
- Paris, IDF, FranceCanopy
Paris's Plan Arbre set a target of 170,000 trees planted between 2020 and 2026, and 129,542 had been planted by late 2026.
- London, ENG, United KingdomCanopy
London's urban forest holds almost 8.5 million trees, about one per inhabitant, and roughly 60% of them are privately owned.
- London, ENG, United KingdomMoney
London's trees deliver carbon capture, rainwater interception, pollution removal and building energy savings valued at £132.7 million a year.
- London, ENG, United KingdomHealth
London's urban forest avoided an estimated 153 heat-attributable deaths from 2015 to 2022, and areas in the top tenth for canopy were 0.8°C cooler by day and 2.0°C cooler at night than the bottom tenth during the 2022 heatwaves.
- Saloum Delta, FK, SenegalWater
Mangroves in Senegal's Saloum Delta gained about 3,600 hectares between 2000 and 2015, with 96% of the expansion from spontaneous natural regeneration after the droughts of the 1980s and 1990s.
Forest Ecology and Management 2020, mangrove resilience in the Saloum Delta (Senegal), 2020
- Phoenix, AZ, United StatesCanopy
Tree canopy across Phoenix census tracts ranges from just 2% to 30%, with a median of 11%, in the hottest large city in the United States.
City of Phoenix, Shade Phoenix Plan / Tree and Shade program, 2024
- Phoenix, AZ, United StatesCanopy
The Shade Phoenix Plan commits more than $60 million over five years to plant over 27,000 trees and build 550 shade structures, nearly doubling the city's annual planting rate, with 85% of investment in low- to middle-income neighborhoods.
City of Phoenix, Shade Phoenix Plan / Tree and Shade program, 2024
- Los Angeles, CA, United StatesCanopy
Tree canopy covers 21% of the City of Los Angeles, ranging from 7% to 37% by council district, with about 10.8 million existing trees.
- Los Angeles, CA, United StatesCanopy
Los Angeles has physical room for 2.5 million more trees, of which 1.3 million sites are realistic to plant, enough for the city's 1-million-tree goal.
- Los Angeles, CA, United StatesMoney
Planting 1 million new trees in Los Angeles was projected to return $1.33 billion to $1.95 billion in benefits over 35 years, or $38 to $56 per tree per year, with stormwater reduction the largest environmental benefit at 8% of the total.
- Sacramento, CA, United StatesEnergy
SMUD and the Sacramento Tree Foundation have given away more than 630,000 free shade trees to Sacramento-area customers since 1990 to cool homes and cut cooling costs.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Free Shade Trees, 2026
- Denver, CO, United StatesCanopy
Denver's Office of the City Forester oversees about 210,000 right-of-way (street) trees.
City and County of Denver, Office of the City Forester, 2026
- Washington, DC, United StatesCanopy
Washington, DC's tree canopy stands at 37%, up from 35% in 1999 but far below the more than 50% canopy the city had in the early 1970s.
- Washington, DC, United StatesCanopy
Washington, DC aims for 40% tree canopy by 2032 under its 2013 Sustainability Plan, and the city and partners planted 20,471 trees in 2025 against a 10,500-tree target.
- Washington, DC, United StatesCooling
In Washington, DC, the coolest neighborhoods have about three times the tree canopy of the neighborhoods experiencing extreme heat.
- Washington, DC, United StatesHealth
Washington, DC areas with lower health burdens have about 1.5 times more tree canopy than areas with higher health challenges, and 89% of the city's roughly 2 million trees are in good or excellent condition.
- Atlanta, GA, United StatesAir
Atlanta's forests remove about 19 million pounds of air pollutants a year, worth about $47 million annually, according to American Forests.
- Louisville, KY, United StatesCooling
Louisville, found to have the fastest-growing urban heat island in the United States, averaged a 5°F daytime and 13°F nighttime temperature gap between its hottest and coolest areas in summer 2012.
- Louisville, KY, United StatesHealth
Louisville's urban heat island was estimated to cause 53 additional heat-related deaths during the 2012 warm season, concentrated in denser, lower-income neighborhoods west of downtown.
- Louisville, KY, United StatesHealth
Combining tree planting and green cover with cool roofs and energy efficiency in Louisville was modeled to lower temperatures by more than 5°F on hot days and cut heat-island-attributable deaths by more than 20%, from 53 to 42 in a single summer.
- Baltimore, MD, United StatesCanopy
TreeBaltimore, the city's urban forestry initiative, aims to increase Baltimore's tree canopy to 40%.
- Baltimore, MD, United StatesHealth
In the greater Baltimore region, a 10% increase in tree canopy was associated with a 12% reduction in crime (Troy, Grove and O'Neil-Dunne 2012).
- Baltimore, MD, United StatesSurvival
Baltimore Tree Trust planted more than 3,000 trees in 84 neighborhoods in 2024 and reports a 70% survival rate across the 6,000 trees it maintains under a two-year warranty.
- Detroit, MI, United StatesCanopy
The Greening of Detroit has planted more than 166,000 trees in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park since 1989.
The Greening of Detroit, 2026
- Minneapolis, MN, United StatesCanopy
Tree canopy covers more than 29.8% of Minneapolis, according to the University of Minnesota's 2015 Twin Cities urban tree canopy assessment.
- Minneapolis, MN, United StatesCanopy
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board cares for about 600,000 public trees: nearly 200,000 boulevard trees along 1,100 miles of streets and 400,000 park trees on more than 7,000 acres.
- New York City, NY, United StatesAir
New York City's trees remove about 1,100 tons of air pollution a year, with health benefits valued at $78 million a year.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesWildlife
138 tree species or genera were recorded across New York City in the 2013 i-Tree Eco assessment, up from 66 species recorded in 1996.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesCanopy
New York City has an estimated 7.0 million trees, and tree canopy covers 21% of the city.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesCarbon
New York City's trees store about 1.2 million tons of carbon valued at $153 million and remove 51,000 tons more a year ($6.8 million).
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesMoney
The compensatory value of New York City's trees is estimated at $5.7 billion.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesEnergy
New York City's urban forest lowers residential energy costs by about $17.1 million a year.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- New York City, NY, United StatesWater
New York City's trees reduce stormwater runoff by 69 million cubic feet a year (about 516 million gallons), worth $4.6 million a year.
Nowak et al. 2018, The Urban Forest of New York City, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-117, 2013
- Portland, OR, United StatesCanopy
Portland's tree canopy covered 32.4% of the city in 2025, up from 29.7% in 2000 but down from a 2015 peak of 33.4%.
Portland Parks & Recreation Urban Forestry, 2025 Tree Canopy Cover Update, 2025
- Portland, OR, United StatesCanopy
Neighborhoods west of the Willamette River in Portland have 56% tree canopy, while those east of the river have just 22%, and the Urban Forest Plan targets 45% canopy citywide within 40 years.
Portland Parks & Recreation Urban Forestry, 2025 Tree Canopy Cover Update, 2025
- Portland, OR, United StatesMoney
Portland has room for about 1.3 million additional trees, which would provide nearly $200 million a year in services.
Portland Parks & Recreation Urban Forestry, Tree Canopy and Potential 2018 (plans and reports page), 2018
- Portland, OR, United StatesMoney
Street trees in Portland add an average of $8,870 to a home's sale price and cut its time on the market by 1.7 days, with benefits spilling over to neighboring houses.
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesAir
Philadelphia's trees remove about 513 tons of air pollution a year, with health benefits worth $19.0 million a year.
Nowak et al. 2016, The Urban Forest of Philadelphia, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-106, 2012
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesCanopy
Philadelphia has an estimated 2.9 million trees and 20% tree canopy; its parklands hold 1.1 million of those trees with 64% canopy and provide 38.8% of the city's tree carbon storage.
Nowak et al. 2016, The Urban Forest of Philadelphia, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-106, 2012
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesCanopy
Philadelphia's tree canopy sits at about 20%, and the Philly Tree Plan aims to reach 30% canopy by 2050, the level at which research projects significant health benefits.
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesCarbon
Philadelphia's trees store about 702,000 tons of carbon ($93.4 million) and remove 27,000 tons more a year ($3.6 million).
Nowak et al. 2016, The Urban Forest of Philadelphia, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-106, 2012
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesMoney
Philadelphia's urban forest saves residents $6.9 million a year in energy costs and has a compensatory value of $1.7 billion.
Nowak et al. 2016, The Urban Forest of Philadelphia, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-106, 2012
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesHealth
Reaching Philadelphia's tree canopy goal is projected to prevent 403 premature deaths a year (Kondo et al. 2020, Lancet Planetary Health), a benefit valued at about $5 billion a year.
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesHealth
A 10 percentage-point increase in urban tree canopy has been associated with a 19% reduction in overweight or obese body mass index, in a city where 68% of adults are overweight or obese.
- Philadelphia, PA, United StatesSurvival
A Philadelphia street tree survey found annual survival rates and lifespans in line with the national meta-analysis: roughly 95% to 96.5% of street trees survive each year, giving a population half-life of 13 to 20 years.
- Pittsburgh, PA, United StatesCanopy
Allegheny County's tree canopy covered 51.7% of the county in 2020, but it lost a net 4,115 acres of canopy between 2015 and 2020 (21,047 acres lost, 16,931 gained), while the City of Pittsburgh netted a gain of 4 acres.
- Nashville, TN, United StatesCanopy
Root Nashville, a city-led campaign with the Cumberland River Compact, aims to plant 500,000 trees across Davidson County by 2050.
Root Nashville, 2026
- Austin, TX, United StatesAir
Austin's trees remove about 1,253 tons of air pollution a year, valued at $2.8 million.
Nowak et al. 2016, Austin's Urban Forest, 2014, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-100, 2014
- Austin, TX, United StatesWildlife
Field crews recorded 62 different tree species in Austin's urban forest, with the 10 most common species making up 83.6% of all trees.
Nowak et al. 2016, Austin's Urban Forest, 2014, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin NRS-100, 2014