For about the past 10 years, N.C. State researchers George Hess, Melissa McHale and Kevin Bigsby have been studying the possibility of Raleigh losing its shady, green leaf coverage.

The researchers are trying to find preventive ways to avoid Raleigh becoming more like Baltimore.  According to Hess, Baltimore has 24 percent tree coverage and Raleigh is at 55 percent. The coverage on the two cities’ landscapes is similarly spread out. Baltimore has an extremely dense downtown area where there are smaller land parcels for trees to grow.

“That’s what might happen to Raleigh,” Hess said. “If that happens without anything to counteract it, we could wind up looking like [Baltimore].”

However, Hess said that near the outskirts of the cities there is much more room for trees to flourish as a result of less density and the population of buildings and people.

“Notice where the tree cover is,” Hess said. “It’s sort of on the outer edges of the city, which are areas that are less dense and there are probably parks and things like that there.”

The main reason the capital city’s tree coverage may be dwindling is due to urban morphology. According to Hess, some other supporting factors are socioeconomic as well as historical traditions.

In an article by Hess and Bigsby, the researchers stated that: “Urban morphological characteristics were better predictors of tree cover patterns than socioeconomic factors in Raleigh and Baltimore at the parcel and neighborhood scales.”

Hess explained by definition that someone or a corporation owns a parcel of land and it can be changed or developed.

“Our downtown is so much smaller so we have more of this post-World War II suburban growth, which is larger parcels that still have trees left on them,” Hess said. “The other thing is along the major transport corridors like Highway 70, Highway 40, Capital Boulevard and US 1 you can see those are areas that are more heavily developed and there are fewer trees there. In those areas it’s shopping centers and denser development with smaller or very commercial parcels.”

Raleigh is a metropolitan area that is continuously growing in size. Hess said that due to this dense development of buildings, houses, apartment complexes and condos to compensate for the growing population, the land space on the parcels are becoming smaller, making less room for trees to grow.

The smaller parcel sizes mean that all the developments are being built closer together. The areas where this is most common are around downtown Raleigh, which is generally the central point of the city.

“Now what is happening is that people are discovering that if we keep building residencies that include bigger lots and are more spread out, then we aren’t going to be able to fit in all the people that are moving here,” Hess said. “Houses are now being built closer together again and at some point you physically will run out of space for trees.”

Around the beltline, however, is where the suburbs are and there is more space for trees to grow.

“Within the beltline you can even see more trees away from downtown because there’s these larger lots, so there is more of this sort of 60s suburban development that occurred there,” Hess said.

Hess hopes that what is happening to Raleigh’s downtown will not start occurring in the suburban outskirts of the city, too. Hess and his team decided to get involved in these studies because personally it is something that interests them, and it is important to see trees and green areas conserved. The ecosystem services also had a motivating impact on why the team of researchers decided to conduct their study.

“We’re all interested to see what happens to the cities that this can occur to,” Hess said.

Hess said that even the obesity epidemic in the United States could be positively affected by finding more space for trees. He hopes to keep Raleigh a clean and green environment, so that when people go outdoors they can enjoy it even more, which could lead to more physical activity outside.

“There’s only so much room for trees and the houses are pretty big too,” Hess said. “Hence that needs to be counteracted if we want to maintain our canopy cover by maintaining inbuilt space, which would include parks, avenues and things like that.”

The ultimate goal the researchers have is to find methods to counteract the increased development with more space for trees, or else Raleigh will more than likely start to resembling Baltimore’s tree canopy.