Brent Lewis provided the following update to the Land and Water iCAP Team:

One of the iCAP objectives under Land and Water (4.2.1) involves a service learning project to better understand our historic and current tree canopy percentages.  I just wanted to reach out and say that I’ve worked it out with our NRES faculty member, Jennifer Fraterrigo that she will work with her students in the fall to prepare this analysis.  As our last 2 tree surveys were generally on 2008 and 2018, they will take a look at those years and put together an analysis.  Over this time, I believe we lost between 10-12% of our tree inventory on campus.  It is my thought that this loss in older trees would have meant a much larger loss in actual tree canopy.  This would generally equate to a loss of habitat, increase in ambient temperatures and increase in rainwater that would otherwise have been used by the trees.  I have been wanting to get a handle on the loss as I push for resources to replace what we had, as well as enhance what we will have for the future.