Urban trees: lost and found

Too many of us know about lost trees in the city of Ottawa. As many as 80,000 ash trees have died due to a tiny green insect. In the urban core, infill development begins by clear cutting almost every tree on a property before putting lots of green into the pockets of developers. Climate change hands out high winds and heavy rains that destroy beloved trees in parks and on residential streets.

Lost Trees of Ottawa is an online map where you can personalize this reality. It only takes a few minutes to visit the website and plot the place, size and species of trees that are no longer standing within the city's urban canopy. Let's map how both natural events and human activity are having an impact.

Meanwhile, in the Glebe Report's June editiion, Jennifer Humphries writes about Big trees, little trees: what of the in-betweens?

And a discussion that CBC radio captured just a few days ago in Toronto is worth a listen. You'll hear a panel of 3 experts who were part of a recent conference called The Urban Forest of Tomorrow. Here's how CBC's website describes the conversation that you can hear online:

Urban forests clean our air, lower our stress levels, reduce our energy costs and mitigate the risk of floods. Little wonder that urban foresters are ​now ​promoting trees as​ a critical part of a city's infrastructure, as essential as roads and sewers.