Social Media Resources

Cities participating in the Urban FIA program may access City-specific social media graphics based on real data from My City’s Trees.

Download graphics like these (and more!) to share information about your city’s urban forest on social media. Be sure to tag Urban Forest Inventory and Analysis partners, including USDA Forest Service, i-Tree, and Texas A&M Forest Service, in your posts.

Include a Call to Action in your posts, such as commenting, sharing, and visiting a website.

Platform links to include

Increase visibility and reach by using a common hashtag in your posts.

Hashtags to include

Download General Urban FIA Social Media Templates (65 MB ZIP)

The information presented in these graphics comes from the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program. Refer to the My City’s Trees web application or the USDA Forest Service for more information.

Key Terms

Carbon Storage

Trees store carbon. As they grow, they lock away more carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon storage includes the amount of carbon bound up in the aboveground and belowground portions of live and dead trees.

Energy Savings

Trees reduce residential energy use by shading buildings, providing evaporative cooling, and blocking winter winds. Reductions in energy use not only reduce the use of fuels, but also save residents money. In some instances trees can increase energy use instead — for example, by shading a home in winter. Energy savings estimates include live trees at least five inches in diameter and 20 feet tall.

Avoided Runoff

Trees intercept precipitation and promote infiltration and water storage in the soil. Avoided surface water runoff is estimated by comparing the difference in runoff with and without trees present, using rainfall intercepted and evapotranspiration by leaves and ground surface storage and infiltration.

Messaging, communications and outreach guides

These guides are designed to help communicate the significance of Urban FIA and help communities involved in this program to more effectively use the data and the data tools. The guidance will also help users communicate and translate the benefits of being able to make data-driven decisions about the management of urban and community forests.

Communications, education, and awareness fill a crucial role in urban forest management and in community and environmental sustainability.

Cities and communities inform the public and empower individuals to:

• make informed decisions about resource management practices and personal responsibility in protecting their urban forests and communities
• adopt and accept more sustainable forest management practices
• support and advocate for policies that protect communities and the environment
• influence policymakers to implement and enforce practices that also benefit and protect the environment

Urban FIA enables us to communicate and translate the value of the urban forest to non-forestry-based audiences and decision-makers.

Urban FIA Communications and Outreach Messaging Guide

This guide outlines how the Urban FIA brand should be communicated, ensuring consistency and clarity in all messaging across different channels and from different sources.

It includes target audiences, benefits, and the value of the data and platforms, and key messages.

This guidance is to be used as the foundation for all communication—including presentations, articles, and social media posts.

The primary audiences are non-forestry audiences.

Messages are written and delivered in clear, common language, relatively free of jargon and acronyms.

Urban FIA Communications and Outreach Strategy Guide

This document provides general guidance to communities wishing to communicate and translate the value of the urban forest to general audiences and decision-makers.

There are several ways that communities and cities communicate already. This guide will help you find those channels and communicate through them, leveraging existing community resources, networks and media channels to broaden the reach of our urban forest stories as unfolded by Urban FIA data.

Communications and Outreach Templates

You can use these tools and templates to share your urban forest stories. These templates provide a head start for leveraging your Urban FIA data by populating a city communications template (e.g., press releases, newsletters, public service announcements, or social media). The goal is to move from technical metrics to compelling public value statements.

Download the Communications and Outreach Templates (ZIP)

Communications and outreach online course

The Urban FIA online course is a technical training and a lesson in data-driven advocacy. It equips program personnel and non-forestry audiences with the national standard methodology needed to translate trees and urban canopy into quantifiable economic, environmental, and public health metrics.

The core benefit of Urban FIA is that it transforms raw data into compelling, audience-specific stories. The course teaches you how to collect and process the metrics needed to engage any stakeholder.

The data generated through this methodology becomes your most effective asset for building advocacy because it allows stakeholders to connect the forest directly to their specific priorities.

You can help drive the future of sustainable urban forest management through compelling, data-driven communication. Turn your urban forest’s impact into a powerful, persuasive story.

Take action today.