Increasingly, foresters and urban
foresters, as well as arborists, horti-
culturists, and landscape planners, are
looking to engage rural communities
in tree planting and tree maintenance
programs. Efforts to engage rural
stakeholders can be considered para-
mount to further enhancing large-scale
state/provincial or federal planting
goals. Across this three-part series,
Alexander Martin dives into the ter-
minology, issues, opportunities, and
case studies of small communities and
their urban forestry departments.
Rural Urban Forestry, Part 1 of 3:
Terminology and
the Blurred Lines
of the Wildland-
Urban Interface
The urban forest of Taiwan's capital city Taipei.
Through the past several years of reviewing grant and
funding requests from tree planting NGOs and commu-
nity groups for the Canadian TREE Fund, I've observed
that most have sought to expand canopy cover in urban
areas. This reflects how our profession has been commu-
nicating the benefits of urban forestry: largely focused
on providing ecosystem services in urban areas.
While the majority of American and Canadian people
live in urban areas, the importance of tree planting
across the entirety of a state or province, or even nation-
wide, requires an understanding of the challenges and
opportunities for rural and remote communities in
building or maintaining their "urban" forests. These
areas include a number of distinctions which set them
apart from their urban and suburban counterparts.
To begin to understand how we can build resilience in
the urban forest—which I define as the trees between
houses in a populated area—we must first under-
stand the current structure of rural urban forestry.
Story and photos by
Alexander Martin
ISA Board Certified Master Arborist,
Co-Chair of the Canadian TREE
Fund, and Director of Ironwood
Urban Forestry Consulting Inc.
26 CityTREES
