Urban Forestry staff classifies points from aerial images derived from i-Tree Canopy, Google Maps, and ESRI shapefiles into one of four categories - trees, water, impervious surfaces (buildings, pavement, concrete, etc.), and pervious surfaces. Each year, 3,000 random points are sampled to achieve a reasonable confidence interval for the results.  A software program then calculates the percentage of each of the four categories. For the reported tree canopy coverage calculation, only the percentage of trees on land mass is used by deducting the percentage of water since trees cannot be planted in water. This is consistent with the recommended process to measure tree canopy coverage used by the Florida Forest Service.

To calculate overall tree canopy, the City uses a web-based software tool, i-Tree Canopy, developed by the USDA Forest Service and their partners at www.itreetools.org, and current aerial images from Google Maps utilizing an ESRI shapefile of the City boundaries.