Street Tree Inventory

The History

The City of Columbus maintains an inventory of all public trees, including street and parks trees.  This information is collected by physically visiting each tree on public land and collecting multiple data on that tree and is stored and regularly updated in a GIS-based tree management software.

In 1996, the City of Columbus completed an inventory of the city-managed street trees. Since then, the inventory has been updated to reflect trees planted and removed. However, other information, like tree size, condition and maintenance needs, has rarely been updated. An inventory of park trees was completed in 2015. Of the 127,000 plus trees in the inventory, only about 10 percent have been updated within the last five years. Due to the data accuracy issues, the tree inventory analysis conducted for this project should be viewed as a snapshot in time, providing a general picture of the state of Columbus’ trees.

To gain a more comprehensive and accurate assessment, a new street and park tree inventory started in summer 2020. Below is a summary of the street tree inventories by community. We will continue to add reports as they are completed.