There are an estimated 8 billion trees currently growing in the state of Tennessee. Yet, the Tennessee Environmental Council seeks to plant more, largely due to the large amounts of carbon trees are able to capture. To get an estimate of how many trees they can plant across the state, they need to know how much land is available to be used for planting. To provide a snapshot of available land in Tennessee, I decided to analyze the area surrounding Clarksville, Tennessee as a possible indicator for the rest of the state. To get the best idea of land available for tree planting, a suitability analysis considering environmental factors like sunlight, rainfall, and soil type as well as anthropocentric factors like land use and permitting. As a first step in this larger goal, I conducted a supervised classification to locate and calculate the area of land technically available for tree planting. I found that 5714 acres are available which translates to approximately 62 million trees.
18 thoughts on “An Exploration of Land Available for Tree Planting in Clarksville, TN”
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Neat application of GIS! Your classification must be pretty accurate with all of those polygons. It’d be interesting to see what portion of the area you calculated would be suitable in reality, given a tree probably can’t grow in one isolated cell if the map units are small, etc.
Hi Monica- as a Clarksville native, I am very interested in this project and your results! I enjoy that you provided the classification needed to conduct this analysis, and was wondering if you considered or had a hard time differentiating between different types of “ground,” such as grass on a golf course versus golf on a sod farm, and how you think those indicators would limit the potential number of trees that could be planted? I wonder if these more specific classifications would be better suited for a Suitability Analysis, just as you mention in the conclusion. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Alyssa! I did not consider the different types of ground in this analysis even though I knew that not all ground is equal in its ability to support trees. If I were to do this analysis again, I may consult other mapping platforms like Google Maps to get a better idea of what the areas I classified as “ground’ were actually used for and classify the image again with more specific categories.
This is a really interesting starting point for thinking about tree planting potential. Do you know yet what kind of factors you would be taking into account if you wanted to expand this into a suitability analysis?
Thank you, Hannah! If I were to expand this project and run suitability analysis, I would consider factors like sunlight availability, rainfall, and climate. I would also think more about the different types of trees that could be planted and possibly run different suitability analyses for different tree species.
Fabulous and fascinating work Monica! Thank you for conducting this thorough analysis, research and reporting on behalf of Tennessee Environmental Council!
Thank you, Jeff! I’m glad I was able to contribute to the Tennessee Environmental Council’s mission.
Hey Monica! This is definitely a neat application of GIS technology, and I love to see that your work is going to a good cause here in Tennessee. I live near Nashville, but I am often in Clarksville to visit my significant other. One thing I’ve learned and noticed about Clarksville from my time being there is that the suburbs take up an incredible amount of land, and I know the city is still in need or more homes with the real estate market in Clarksville being especially hot lately. As the city grows, I was wondering how you think your research may conflict with the interest of home builders in the next decade? Do you think we will see Clarksville have even more suburban sprawl while also providing land for planting trees? Or, if suburbs continue to be built do you see any alternatives for creating green space within the city?
Hi Patrick, I appreciate you sharing your on the ground observations in Clarksville! There could definitely be conflicts of interest if trees were planted in areas developers wanted to utilize for new suburbs. The Tennessee Environmental Council, where I am interning this year, have initiatives to encourage homeowners in Tennessee to plant native TN trees on their properties. To mitigate the conflicts that would arise from planting trees on land that could be utilized for building houses, the Council could target their program to developers so that trees are present in the neighborhoods when they are built, and then later could reach out to homeowners so that they could plant trees on their properties.
Hey Monica, love how clearly your results are presented! I’m interested to hear more about your personal interest in and the future use of this data- did you work with the Tennessee Environmental Council? Do you know if they are planning on implementing a tree-planting campaign at some point?
Hi Nadia! I am an intern with the Tennessee Environmental Council which is how I know about their desire to plant more trees in Tennessee. They already have a tree planting campaign called Tennessee Tree Day where they distribute native TN trees to TN residents. This analysis was meant to give an indication of how the tree planting campaign can be expanded, possibly to more non-residential areas!
Very interesting project, Monica. As a resident of Clarksville for the past 10 years, I have hated seeing so much of the open land converted to new housing developments with the near ubiquitous removal of trees and no replanting. My family lives in such a subdivision that was brand new 10 years ago and very few trees are here in what had previously been pasture and farmland. Would my parents’ yard be included in the “Ground” category because it is only a lawn with no trees? How would I calculate how many trees our property could sustain with your information?
Hi Chris! Another student who frequents Clarksville also pointed out the abundance of housing developments in the area! I included yards in the “ground” category since there is potential for trees to be planted there although I know that it is not realistic to think that every available plot of land could actually support trees. The purpose of my project was just to see what land was available, so I’m not sure that my analysis would be useful for individual homeowners. In theory, a suitability analysis that took into account social factors like aesthetics and people’s attitudes towards trees on their properties would be of more use to you!
Monica, you have a good start on a worthy cause –the greening of Tennessee. I’m curious about what directions you might take it from here? What kinds of layers would you incorporate in a suitability analysis? This result suggests an upper absolute limit, but what other real world factors would restrict the areas where trees could be planted? How might those rasters be incorporated in a suitability analysis? One detail question: why 2 foot spacing between trees? Is this a standard you saw somewhere? Would be interesting to see recommendations for tree spacing, and how it varies by species/type of tree, etc.
HI Professor Wernke! If I were to run a suitability analysis I would consider factors like soil, rainfall, and tree size. Real world factors like people’s openness to planting trees in their yard, areas that can only be used for farmland, and areas where planting trees would interfere with existing infrastructure could also restrict the areas where trees could be planted. Honestly, the 2 foot spacing was arbitrary and was just the standard option for the trees per acre calculator that I used. I am definitely interested in getting a fuller picture of what trees could be planted in Tennessee and where.
Hi Monica, I really like your project and believe you found an efficient way to elucidate the somehow complicated research question. I’m just curious to know what inspired you to make the assumption that trees are planted 2ft apart from each other? I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
Hi Peregrine! The 2 feet spacing between trees was relatively arbitrary and I used it because it was the default on the trees per acre calculator that I used.
Thanks! Even with over a hundred polygons there were still areas where the classification wasn’t perfect, which just reinforces the idea that maps cannot perfectly represent reality. Hopefully with further analysis it will be evident which areas can actually support trees!