Displaying items by tag: canopy
Seeing the city for the trees
This mighty oak is but one of many growing for decades in South Knoxville. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press
Contribute to the master plan to grow tree canopy in Knoxville
KNOXVILLE — No matter where you are in the city, you’re not far from a patch or two of trees.
These copses range from small groupings of oaks or dogwoods that are commonly used to mark property boundaries to lush belts of temperate mixed-hardwood forest that sprawl across hundreds of acres.
While Knoxville may be blessed with an abundance of these urban forests, many local residents and leaders believe it’s nowhere near enough.
- knoxville mayor sustainability
- knoxville tree cover
- knoxville tree master plan
- jj stambaugh
- trees knoxville
- knoxville urban wilderness
- knoxville urban forest master plan
- knoxville urban tree canopy assessment
- knoxville
- urban forest
- canopy
- public participation
- stakeholder input
- kasey krause
- urban forester
- tennessee division of forestry
- keep knoxville beautiful
Marking points in time: The Hal DeSelm Papers

A life dedicated to the flora of Tennessee
Dr. Hal DeSelm clambered around the crest of Cherokee Bluff in the heat of a late Knoxville summer 22 years ago. The Tennessee River flowed languidly some 500 feet below. Beyond the river stood the campus of the University of Tennessee Agriculture Institute. The towers of the city center rose to the northeast beyond the bridges of the old frontier river town.
DeSelm was not interested in the views of the urban landscape below. He was interested in the native trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses that clung to the ancient cliffside with firm but ultimately ephemeral grips on the craggy soil.
The retired UT professor, a renowned ecologist and botanist who died in 2011, had been sampling the terrestrial flora of Tennessee for decades. The life-long project took on a new urgency in the early 1990s, when he accelerated his data collection in hopes of writing the authoritative guide to the natural vegetation native to the forests, barrens, bogs and prairies of pre-European Tennessee.
Between 1993 and 2002, DeSelm collected 4,184 data points from 3,657 plots across the state. Many of those plots have since been lost to development, highways, and agriculture, or overrun by exotic species, but he assembled an invaluable baseline of the native landscape. Many of the sites he recorded have since been lost to development.
- science
- botany
- botanist
- Tennessee River
- native plant
- native tree
- native herb
- native grass
- native shrub
- Tennessee
- University of Tennessee
- terrestrial flora
- barren
- cedar barren
- ecologist
- Hal DeSelm
- Cherokee Bluff
- University of Tennessee Agricultural Institute
- native landscape
- preEuropean Tennessee
- natural vegetation
- sampling plot
- 1993
- 2002
- exotic species
- invasive species
- Todd Crabtree
- Tennessee State Botanist
- Natural Heritage Program
- conservation
- understory
- canopy
- ground cover
- herbaceous growth
- geology
- bedrock
- soil type
- forest
- conservationist
- database
- collection
- baseline data