Accurately monitoring the health of urban forests, says Beery, is critical as cities adapt to climate change. “Urban forests provide shade and evapotranspiration, and are vital to things like reducing wind speed, capturing stormwater runoff, and soil stability,” she says. “It’s environmental infrastructure that is really beneficial when you have extreme weather events.” The monitoring can also lend insight into what kinds of trees planted now will be most beneficial in the years to come. “We’re seeing climate change shift ecosystem zones, and ecologists predict, for example, that the species that are going to thrive best in New York City in fifty years are the ones that are currently thriving in North Carolina,” says Beery.

In the future, the dataset will expand to cover additional cities in North America and around the globe and allow for more nuanced monitoring of the health and growth of trees over time. Beery’s hope is that the more detailed models will enable cities to allocate their resources as effectively as possible to foster thriving, equitable, and actively managed urban forests. “That’s the dream, but I do think it will happen,” says Beery, who is beginning a professorship in AI & Decision Making at MIT this fall. “Anytime I know that the work my collaborators and I have done is truly useful and is actually providing some benefit—that’s the best thing.”