The latest tree canopy cover data for Greater Sydney shows that the most gains in coverage have been made in the city’s western suburbs.
The 2024-25 data indicates stability as a whole across the wider metropolitan area, with the canopy of trees over 3m tall climbing a fraction from 21.7% in 2022-23 to 21.9% in 2024-25. In 2019 it was 21%.
The biggest gains have been in western Sydney local government areas (LGAs), which have attained steady coverage change from 2019 to 2022, consistent with urban greening programs that have been prioritised for the hottest areas of the metropolis.
The 2024-25 canopy dataset is available on the NSW Government’s SEED portal, and comprises three parts:
- Tree canopy data that details vegetation over 3m in height and which enables fine-grained analysis. This is the first time that data with this level of detail has been made public.
- Tree canopy data summarised and displayed in a modified mesh block scale, which is a common unit of measurement used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics based on population.
- Canopy access data, which is displayed in a 65m scale hexagonal grid to show community level canopy access.
According to the data, 25 of 33 LGAs have shown gains in the proportion of communities that have access to at least 30% canopy cover.
Details for each of the separate LGAs is available.
The data has been collected by ArborCarbon in conjunction with the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure.
The data were collected using aerial imagery techniques at 0.48-meter resolution and show:
- Tree height;
- Vegetation health;
- Land surface temperature; and
- Individual trees.
Although the core datasets are not publicly available (in order to protect ArborCarbon’s intellectual property), Greater Sydney councils and NSW Government agencies or their subcontractors (pending approval) can ask for access by submitting a request via the NSW Planning Portal.
