TreeMapLA, brought to you by TreePeople, is a powerful new tool to help residents grow LA’s urban forest. This ambitious effort aims to involve Angelenos of all ages in mapping every tree in Greater Los Angeles. On the website, it’s easy to enter every tree’s location, species, and current size as well as update its needs. TreeMapLA also shows the “eco-benefits” of each tree and the collective eco-benefits of all the trees that get mapped. Said eco-benefits include the environmental benefits and monetary savings of the trees’ services in energy, storm-water, carbon dioxide, and air quality. In other words, the process allows tree mappers to create a powerful digital tool to learn more about our urban forest and its value.

This information will help us to manage the well-being of our region’s urban forest and make our city more livable. A healthier urban forest means a shadier, cleaner, safer, and more beautiful LA, one better able to meet climate change impacts including heat and flooding but also, and most relevant to our current situation, droughts. Users of this information include government agencies, arborists, landscape architects, planners, students, civic organizations, and everyday citizens like you.

For the moment, TreeMapLA is focused on our launch and getting as many trees on the map as possible. But we’ve got several additional features coming soon, including a wonderful stewardship function, which will allow users to mark trees that need help with specific alerts: Needs Water, Needs Weeding, etc… You’ll be able to search by Alerts and mark the actions taken, e.g. “I watered this tree” or “I weeded this tree.” And we’ll be rolling out other new functions to make this tool even more accessible and fun to use in the coming weeks and months.

But, remember, none of the cool features will matter if our map doesn’t have any trees!

So, tree lovers, help us reach our goal of 1,000 trees mapped by March 31st, and be eligible for some great prizes. Get out there and start mapping so more Angelenos can learn, communicate, and take action on behalf of the trees around us!

I encourage you to take a peek at the website and sign up today to start adding trees: www.treemapla.org. You can also like TreeMapLA on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

TreeMapLA has been made possible by a generous grant from CalFire.