Atlanta's tree canopy suffering

The sprawling canopy of magnolias, water oaks and pines that earned Atlanta the nickname “The City in a Forest” is looking significantly thinner these days.

 

Giant hickories have fallen. Hundred-year-old oaks are dying. And thousands and thousands of less recognized trees have ended up in the woodpile after a brutal season that arborists describe as a perfect storm for this city’s famous leafy landscape.

 

In any city, people would carp about blocked roadways or damaged roofs. But in Atlanta, trees mean more. With 27 percent of the city covered with trees, Atlanta charges up to $1,000 to cut down a single one, even with permission. You need only flip through an Atlanta travel brochure, with its references to Peachtree Road or the Dogwood Festival, to understand why Jasen Johns, a city arborist, says, “Trees define Atlanta.”

 

That is also why the city’s self-described tree-huggers are so concerned that Atlanta is losing trees at an unusually rapid rate. The die-off has multiple causes: a severe drought, a series of powerful storms, a surge of invasive species and pests and the natural deaths of older trees planted during the creation of the city’s first planned neighborhoods in the early 1900s.

 

“We’re in emergency mode,” Mr. Johns said. “I’ve never seen this many down trees.”

 

The city does not track the number of lost trees. But everywhere from the Georgia Forestry Commission to the telephone companies that send out repair crews, Atlantans are noticing gaps in the canopy.

 

“It changes the city dramatically,” said Angel Poventud, 39, a train conductor who has encountered fallen trees on the railroad tracks and less shade during bike rides. “Maybe I’m hypersensitive, but I feel like I notice when even one big tree is missing.”

 

The biggest factor in the deforestation, which some residents have called Treepocalypse, has been the steadily bad weather. Although Atlanta was spared the tornadoes that left other parts of the South barren this spring, it caught the residual strong winds, which wreaked havoc on drought-weakened trees. Winds above 50 miles an hour tore through the city on four different days, bringing down some trees that had been alive since the mid-19th century.

 

A laundry list of other threats — fungal diseases like root rot, a rare type of caterpillar and an invasive Japanese insect that kills hemlocks — have all caused losses. And then there is a matter of timing: many of the city’s water oaks, which live about 80 or 90 years, were planted in the 1920s to line new neighborhoods like Ansley Park.