FAQs

The Rural and Urban Forest includes all trees within Kingston's jurisdictional area. It extends across all ownerships (including private), land uses and across the City's urban and rural areas. The processes involved in urban forest management (urban trees) often differ from what is involved in the management of rural areas (rural trees), and while it is important to consider the two independently because of those differences, the scope of the Forest Management Strategy will contain guidance for both.

Kingston's Forest Management Strategy will provide strategic guidance for the management of the City's Rural and Urban Forest over the coming 20 years. The document will include a current analysis of where our Rural and Urban Forest is in terms of distribution and composition, as well as goals, strategies and actions that the City's forest management program will look to achieve over the life of the Forest Management Strategy.

Canopy coverage refers to the leafy area of a tree as measured within an area of interest and as observed from above. You might imagine flying over Kingston in a plane: canopy coverage would be the percentage of Kingston you would observe as covered in trees from that perspective. 

It includes the canopy area of individual trees, as well as larger groupings of trees called woodlands. Woodland coverage (also called forest coverage) is the proportion of land made up of woodland ecosystems. While woodlands contain many trees (and therefore a lot of canopy coverage), woodland coverage is not interchangeable with canopy coverage both because it is not inclusive of the isolated, individual trees growing in urban or rural environments, and because canopy coverage is only one measurement used in delineating a woodland feature. 

Regardless, both measurements will be important as the City looks to monitor the implementation of the Forest Management Strategy in years to come.