Tree Survey 2024 Overview

We wrapped up our 2024 tree surveys this November just before the winter weather set in. We finished off strong at Spring Lake Park Reserve (SLPR) at the southern reaches of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MISS) corridor, surveying over 50 trees within the dense, thorny bushes of common prickly ash, buckthorn, and honey locust. It was a challenging, but successful end to our season, with the bonus of seeing the bison at SLPR.

This surveying effort is to see how Mississippi Park Connection's Plant for the Future Campaign trees are doing and how we can improve or change our planting efforts. We are looking at which species are surviving, if those areas need to be replanted, and noting what species are growing in and around the planting area.

Shout out to our volunteers for their help and flexibility this fall season! Proud of our volunteers for staying curious and eager, while learning new tree identification, adapting to the changing weather, and bushwhacking through unpredictable terrain. We couldn’t have done it without their support. 

Here are some highlights from the data we collected from last year:

In 2024, tree surveyor volunteers were out in the field for 154 hours. Within this time, we surveyed 580 trees, and 28 species at four parks in the MISS corridor (James I. Rice Park, Crosby Farm Regional Park, Mississippi Gorge Regional Park, and Spring Lake Park Reserve). 

Out of 580 trees, we had a survival rate of 40%.  Although this seems like a low survival rate, most of our surveys were in floodplain forests where the regeneration and growing conditions are very challenging for trees. Here's the breakdown of our most seen and alive species: 

This data will be very useful going forward when we consider which trees to plant to be successful in our floodplain forests. 

Our volunteers were a big help in removing tubes from trees that didn’t survive. MPC is conscious of the plastic that is around these trees and tracks our plantings to ensure these tubes will be removed in the future. Here’s some of the tubes we removed in the spring that were reused for plantings during fall 2024!

Overall, we took 1,290 photos of the trees for ID. That number shows the dedication our volunteers put into our surveys. We wanted to share a picture of the tallest tree we surveyed, a hackberry who was almost 11 feet tall. 

Again, we are so grateful for the volunteer support this season. We truly appreciate everything we learned from both the trees, and from our volunteers! We hope everyone continues to stay curious about the natural world this winter, and we’re excited to reconnect this spring. 

If you're looking for more volunteer opportunities, feel free to check out our volunteer page HERE. Look out for details about our Spring tree survey in March!