Atlanta’s famous tree canopy is degrading, according to a study conducted for the city of Atlanta. The research, by Georgia Tech professor Tony Giarrusso, shows that while Atlanta’s tree canopy hasn’t shrunk, the quality of trees has gone down.
In 2008, Giarrusso, the assistant director of the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization at Georgia Tech, used satellite imagery to survey Atlanta’s tree cover. In 2014, he did it again, to see what changed. His final report isn’t yet out, but on Thursday he presented his findings publicly for the first time.
He said just looking at the overall percentage of tree canopy cover in Atlanta, there wasn’t much change between 2008 and 2014, “but as we got on the ground and started to look at things, we noticed a lot of the things that we saw as gain were not true gain,” he said.
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