Leveraging the Full Potential of Landsat to Investigate Inequalities in Post-Development Residential Canopy Cover (1972–2020)

Residential tree canopy cover (CC), which benefits local inhabitants and is managed by municipalities, changes as neighborhoods develop and is connected to demographics. We investigate residential CC and related inequalities across suburbanizing municipalities since 1972 using Landsat’s temporal depth. In the Region of Peel, Ontario, Canada, we built a 49-year (1972–2020) 30 m residential CC time-series by identifying when current neighborhoods transitioned from pre-development. We observe residential CC at the population-weighted municipal and dissemination area level and compare with census data (collected 9 times between 1971 and 2016) to quantify changing CC inequalities along built-form, economic, and racial gradients. Municipal residential CC has remained relatively stable since suburbanization, with new developments offset by CC growth in aging neighborhoods. Post-development, municipalities have gained residential CC at similar rates but from different starting positions based on pre-development forest cover. Different populations have lacked equal access to residential CC, with higher values related to lower population density and visible minority percentages. Inequalities, especially along racial and population density gradients, have strengthened and shifted along with demographic change. We are the first to utilize long-term Landsat time-series for this purpose, with important implications for urban forest management due to the unmatched spatial-temporal coverage of this archive.