Melbourne’s western region is largely missing out on the cooling, air purifying and biophilic benefits of urban tree cover when compared to the city’s east.
Recent “greenprinting” done by Resilient Melbourne and The Nature Conservancy in a bid to protect the city’s urban canopy found that although 15 per cent of Melbourne is covered in trees, there is significant disparity in canopy coverage between the regions.
The eastern region has the highest canopy cover (25 per cent), followed by the inner south-east region (22 per cent) and the western region (4 per cent).
Land surface temperatures were also measured during the mapping exercise, with areas that have less than three per cent vegetation cover and no tall trees generally hot spots for sky high temperatures caused by the urban heat island effect.
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