A pair of researchers from Baldwin Wallace University recently published a study in the journal Urban Ecosystems that examines how drastically tree cover has changed over the years in Cuyahoga County. They found that the county went from being covered almost entirely by forest to less than a quarter of it covered by trees today, waxing and waning as human’s need for the land changed.
Baldwin Wallace University professor and plant ecologist Kathryn Flinn, along with student Zachary Hughes, spent months studying handwritten land surveys from the late 1800s at the Western Reserve Historical Society. They compared those detailed lists of the types and amount of trees covering Cuyahoga County more than two centuries ago with aerial photos from 1938, 1979 and 2021. They found that almost as soon as the area was settled, trees started coming down.
“Throughout the 1800s most of the forest clearing was for agriculture and we went from 98.7 percent forested down to 12 percent forested around 1900,” Flinn told Ideastream Public Media.
As the city of Cleveland started to grow, farms were abandoned, allowing young forests to grow on former agricultural lands. Forest cover rebounded to 25 percent of the county.
According to Flinn, older “primary” forests that have lost individual trees but remained forests all along tend to harbor more biodiversity than younger forests. Still, those younger forests can do a lot of good for the environment, like capture carbon and provide habitat. They weren’t allowed to thrive for long, though. As development continued to sprawl, trees started coming down again.
Flinn’s research found that trees currently cover 21 percent of the county.
Here’s the kicker, she said; in 1979 lawns and development covered 60% of the county, today they cover 72% of the county. During that same time period, the county lost some 300,000 residents.
A timelapse of development in Berea, Ohio from 1984-2022
“It is interesting that the population continues to decrease, and the development continues to sprawl,” Flinn said.
Her research showed that at least in the past development largely happened on former farmlands, meaning only very young trees were cut down. But now, she said, there is essentially no more farmland left.
“There’s essentially no potential to gain more forest area and also development is increasingly destroying forests,” she said.
Flinn hopes her research will help conservationists working to protect existing forests and help inform reforestation efforts.
Many of those existing forests are already under the protection of the Cleveland Metroparks, like the Mill Stream Reservation in Strongsville. This is one of a couple spots in Cuyahoga County where you can walk into the forest and imagine what this area looked like 250 years ago.
“It’s just something about knowing where the forest comes from and knowing that it’s been untouched that just gives like a nice feeling of beauty in nature and all that,” Hughes told me while looking at out the trees in the Mill Stream Reservation.
It was early January, the tree branches were weighed down with snow, and in true college fashion, Hughes wore only a sweatshirt. He’s a senior at Baldwin Wallace, and is genuinely thrilled about already being a published author. He said the Mill Stream Reservation encapsulates much of what he saw on his computer program scouring data and aerial photos last summer: a wedge of primary forest, often along a stream or river, surrounded by upheaval.
“I go back and look at the photos…just seeing all the disappearance of forests and all that, it sucks in a way that it’s like well, we’re humans we did clear it, we need it, but I think there’s a better, sustainable way that we can do it,” he said.
In fact, this research is already being used by local conservationists. Environmental consultant Roy Larick of Bluestone Conservation visited Flinn in her lab to help inform his recommendations for the Doan Brook restoration near Horseshoe Lake in Shaker Heights.
“It’s a nice project because we’ll be able to re-naturalize the stream from Park Drive down to Lee Road, and that’s 60 acres,” Larick said.
He plans to recommend a range of Oaks, but skipping the once abundant Beech trees as they’ve been decimated by pest and disease. He hopes native spies will fare better in light of the unpredictable nature of climate change.
“I think we’re better off replanting with species that historically have done well here, and that makes it less of an experimentation than just planting for climate change,” he said. “We don’t know what climate change is going to bring.”
