Trees For California’s Future
The Trees for California’s Future project connects growers, nurseries, and buyers with information to help supply and plant more drought-tolerant trees in California cities.
Tree canopy cover in cities increases property values, saves everyday Americans money on electric bills and makes the places we live and work great. California is the most urbanized state in the country, yet it also has the lowest per capita canopy cover. This is due to the warm, dry weather, lack of support for innovation in the nursery and tree care industries and lack of information for tree care professionals.
We need to plant species that are drought-tolerant and will thrive on the neglect and hardship that they encounter in our cities. Tough species like this are not available in the large quantities necessary to increase canopy cover through urban planting efforts. Nurseries cannot afford to grow trees they cannot sell, and buyers are wary of trees they don’t already know, so it is a difficult economic prospect for nurseries to expand their inventories.
UFI’s project addresses these compounding issues not only by selecting species well suited to urban environments and drought conditions, but also by educating growers, tree care professionals and related industries about those species, sourcing seeds so growers can expand their inventory and most importantly, connecting growers with buyers for those trees. On this page you will find:
Tree Selection - A curated database of trees suited for low-water urban environments.
City Assessments - Urban forest analyses for California cities using UFEI and UFI data.
Nursery Connections - Links and resources to connect growers, nurseries and planting professionals.
Future Species Modeling - Advanced modeling to refine species lists and develop region-specific recommendation
Tree Selection
SelecTree is a comprehensive database created by tree experts at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that compiles detailed information on thousands of species grown in California. It guides tree selection for urban planting sites by filtering species based on criteria like mature size, canopy shape, environmental preferences, and drought tolerance. The lists below are SelecTree’s expert recommendations of tree species which are the future of urban forestry in California due to drought-adaptations and suitability to California’s harsh urban environments.
City Assessments
City assessments allow California cities to view foundational data about their urban forest, such as trees per capita, canopy cover and species makeup. These data are essential for planning and carrying out urban forest improvement and obtaining them is usually cost prohibitive for many cities.
Nursery Connections
To create thriving urban forests, practitioners need to be able to select the right tree for their project, but that is only part of the equation. They also need to be able to source the tree species they have selected. Perhaps most importantly, nurseries need the economics of growing those trees to make sense. In order to strengthen the pipeline of healthy trees suited to California’s future, we are
Collecting seed of underutilized species to supply nurseries
Arranging contract grows between nurseries and tree planters
Working on implementing nursery stock standards so that assessment of tree quality is straightforward
Adding a nursery connection feature to SelecTree so that tree buyers can immediately see where to source the trees they want
Climate Modeling
Recent initiatives have invested millions of dollars into planting urban trees. To maximize the value of these tree plantings, it is critical that we make informed decisions about what to plant where. We know which tree species currently grow well across California’s diverse urban environments, from the arid deserts of San Diego to the temperate rainforests of Humboldt. Less clear is which species will do well in California’s future climates. To address this question, we are coupling tree occurrence data with projected future climate data using a method called species niche modeling or species distribution modeling.