Cookeville integrating a new heat risk assessment map into its urban planning to identify thermal hotspots and prioritize tree canopy expansion in vulnerable neighborhoods.
Public Works Director Mary Beth Elrod said once a tree reaches maturity and provides shade over a building or a house, that helps reduce energy costs to keep that structure cooled. It also provides refuge for animals to live in and in parks, it provides shade.
“In these areas that have a lot of roadway coverage, pavement coverage, parking lot coverage, building coverage,” Elrod said, “Reestablishing and maintaining a mature tree canopy and a healthy tree canopy is essential in helping the citizens.”
Elrod said mature, established trees require a lot of water to live which helps soak up storm water runoff. The study merged three data sets, according to Elrod, including tree canopy coverage, average summertime surface temperatures from 2014 to 2024, and 2020 census data.
The census information helped officials locate populations most sensitive to high temperatures, such as children, the elderly, and residents in homes without air conditioning.
Elrod said the city already applies for tree planting grants annually and recently submitted a request for 62 trees. The new thermal data will allow the city to justify future grant requests by proving a specific need in identified hotspots.
“We can use these hotspot areas, low tree canopy areas,” Elrod said. “And so we can work with those in our future planning in our 2050 plan and future projects to identify areas that we may need to focus some tree planting.”
Elrod said established neighborhoods like South Maple have healthy canopies, which recently led the city to move utility lines underground to protect the mature trees. In contrast, newer developments like Timber Walk or The Willows Shopping Center near Target and Home Depot are planting trees or have young trees that will not provide significant shade for 15 to 20 years.
“It’s a long-term commitment with trees, you’ve got to water them for the first three summers at least once a week if it doesn’t get one inch of rain per week,” Elrod said. “And then you will start reaping the benefits of your work in five years when the tree really starts taking off and maturing.”
To manage the urban canopy, Cookeville maintains a tree board that includes a biology professor and a representative from Tennessee Tech. Elrod said the city also employs a horticulturist and a utility forester to monitor tree health and rights-of-way.
“We work closely with Tennessee Tech because they are a large campus that have an established tree canopy on their campus,” Elrod said. “They want to maintain their campus trees, and they have a representative on our tree board, plus that professor is a member on our tree board.”
The project was funded through a Tennessee Department of Agriculture grant that selected 11 cities for tree canopy and heat studies. The data was compiled by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Center for Applied Geospatial Data Science using artificial intelligence to process satellite imagery.
