Mapping Tree Canopy to Support Urban Greening Decisions in Hobart

The Challenge

Tree canopy is a key component of urban environments, but understanding how it is distributed — and how it is changing — requires consistent and comparable data over time.

The City of Hobart needed to establish:

• a clear baseline of canopy cover
• how canopy is distributed across the municipality
• how canopy has changed over time

This required a dataset that could be analysed consistently across different locations and time periods.

The Solution

Geoneon used high-resolution satellite imagery and AI-based classification to compare canopy cover between 2017 and 2022, helping the City of Hobart understand where canopy had increased or declined across suburbs, planning zones, and land types.

This work formed part of Hobart’s State of the Canopy report, which provides a five-year snapshot of tree canopy change across the city.

The analysis enabled canopy data to be:

• mapped consistently across the municipality
• compared over time
• broken down by suburb and planning zone

This provided a structured way to understand both the current state of canopy and how it is evolving.

The Results

The State of the Canopy report provides a detailed view of tree canopy across Hobart and how it has changed over a five-year period.

Key outcomes include:

• identification of areas where canopy has increased
• identification of areas where canopy has decreased
• a measured two percent loss of tree canopy on private land over five years
• canopy data broken down by suburb and planning zone

These insights are now being used by the City of Hobart to:

• guide targeted tree planting strategies
• focus efforts in areas where canopy has declined
• support progress toward the city’s 2046 canopy cover target

By providing a consistent and comparable view of canopy change, the analysis supports more informed decisions about where urban greening efforts are most needed.