The city in the forest has less forest. A long-awaited assessment presented to Atlanta City Council members Tuesday found that just 45.7% of the city's land remained under tree cover in 2023, down from 46.5% in 2018 — another 1% of total land area stripped of trees over five years, and a continuation of a trend running through four previous surveys.
The trajectory is consistent. Georgia Tech professor Tony Giarrusso, who authored the report through the university's Center for Urban Resilience and Analytics, found just under 48% coverage when he conducted his first assessment for the city in 2008. It fell to 47.1% by 2014, then 46.5% in 2018. The city's stated goal is maintaining an average of 50%. His team used 2023 satellite imagery for the snapshot, then made site visits to investigate further.
What is causing the loss has shifted. Across the 15 years of his studies, Giarrusso said single-family redevelopment has claimed more trees than any other type of construction — developers \"taking a home that's 1,500 square feet in size and putting a 4,000-square-foot home on that lot and building out to the maximum allowable lot coverage.\" That loss is hard to see. \"It's not a big clear-cut — it's a neighborhood that piece by piece is picked away.\" But between 2018 and 2023, multifamily development and redevelopment accounted for most of the losses, and the concentration is striking: 50% of permitted tree removals occurred on just 2% of development sites, each taking down 100 or more trees.
Giarrusso argues that finding cuts both ways. More multifamily development means housing more residents on less land, which over time could preserve more canopy than the alternative. \"We need to be a denser city if we're going to survive,\" he said. \"We can't just be big, single-family lots.\" That logic matters directly for downtown, where density is the development model.
The report may also be understating the problem. Researchers found large lots cleared around the Great Recession where planned development stalled, allowing new trees to take root during years-long pauses. Those gains look temporary — Atlanta is building again, and many of those trees are being cleared a second time. \"If all of those false or temporary gains were cleared, you're going to have a lot of loss,\" Giarrusso told council members. The survey captures nothing after 2023.
What happens next is unsettled. The city adopted its tree ordinance in 2001 and saw multiple failed attempts to revamp it before the City Council approved the most significant changes in its history last year, raising fees for permitted removals and fines for illegal ones. Michael Smith, a spokesman for Mayor Andre Dickens, said the administration continues work on updates in what he called a multistep process, without saying when proposals will surface. City arboricultural manager David Zaparanick indicated the Department of City Planning wants to wait for the long-running \"Zoning 2.0\" rewrite to finish first: \"We kind of have to see where that's going before we can firmly establish anything in Round 3 of the TPO.\" Asked by Committee Chair Matt Westmoreland whether the rules that took effect in January are working, Zaparanick said it is \"a little too early to be sure.\"
The study found 72% of the city's remaining trees sit on land zoned for single-family housing, which means private yards will largely determine the outcome. Greg Levine, executive director of Trees Atlanta, said the city still needs a preservation standard requiring developers to leave a share of trees undisturbed, plus new incentives for homeowners to plant. \"There are so many pieces that have to be done and the city still has room to improve,\" he said.
Original reporting: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2026-08-05)