Santa Clara County has finished drafting a 40-year Urban Forest Master Plan designed to reverse decades of shrinking tree cover across its 15 cities, with a sharp focus on schools, parks and transit corridors in disadvantaged neighborhoods that have the least shade. The plan is set to go before the county’s Housing, Land Use, Environment and Transportation Committee on Thursday, and committee staff will then forward recommendations to the Board of Supervisors, which may ultimately approve it.
The effort comes from the county’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience, whose director, Cayce Hill, said collective tree planting can improve air quality, cool cities, beautify communities and create a more resilient environment, according to Opportunity Now. The plan is meant to serve as a roadmap and toolbox that gives the county and its cities shared tools and support to grow a greener landscape, rather than leaving each jurisdiction to tackle the problem alone.
A City That Has Lost Ground
The stakes are clearest in San Jose, the county’s largest city, which lost roughly 1,728 acres — about 2.7 square miles — of tree cover between 2012 and 2018, according to the City of San Jose. That decline dropped the city’s canopy from 15.3% down to 13.5%, even as single-family and multi-family residential lots account for roughly 70% of all the city’s trees. In February 2022, the San Jose City Council responded by adopting its own Community Forest Management Plan, setting a target of reaching 20% canopy coverage by 2051. City arborists have estimated that recovering just one percentage point of lost canopy requires planting roughly 40,000 mature-spread trees.
The urgency was underscored again this year when the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury released a report titled “A Canopy in Decline: Is San José serious about expanding its tree coverage?” on May 19, examining ongoing tree loss and municipal management challenges in the city, per the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. That report prompted formal responses from San Jose city departments over the summer.
Mapping Where the Gaps Are
Baseline geospatial data compiled by the county shows urban areas across Santa Clara County currently maintain just 18% tree canopy cover, while possessing 33% possible plantable space, according to county mapping posted on ArcGIS. That mapping, built at the census block group level, allows planners to target planting efforts at a granular neighborhood scale rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach countywide…