2 Billion Trees Program: Long-Term Monitoring Plan

The 2 Billion Trees (2BT) program collaborates with funding partners to understand their plans for preparing sites, how they are selecting species, and how they plan to monitor after planting. Planning before tree planting helps ensure success in the long-term and contributes to the long-term resiliency of our forests.

The program also wants to ensure that we have a plan in place to monitor the trees after the program ends. Trees grow and provide benefits for decades!

The 2BT program’s Long-Term Monitoring Plan outlines the strategy for monitoring planted trees and includes two separate but related monitoring activities: project site visits and technical surveys.

Project site visits

Project site visits can help inform future program decisions. They are important and here is why:

• Assessing progress: The program visits with recipients at their place of business to meet with staff and discuss how projects are progressing, including any challenges, successes, or questions regarding financial and planting activity reporting. Sometimes this requires a visit to the planting sites.
• Seeing projects in action: 2BT program staff can check out funded projects firsthand, verify accuracy of information provided, observe potential issues on the ground, and gather valuable insights that might not come through in reports.
• Building relationships: These visits help strengthen our connections with recipients and provide new opportunities for future tree planting projects.

In 2023, the 2BT program piloted its approach to project site visits. Annual site visits started in 2024, integrating lessons learned to refine our approach. Our goal is to maximize the benefits for the program, our funding recipients, and Canadians.

By improving our site visit process, we aim to ensure effective tree planting projects and strengthen our partnerships, contributing to a greener and more sustainable future for Canada.

Technical surveys

The Canadian Forest Service, along with provincial and territorial governments, other federal departments, and select private sector partners receiving 2BT funding, are implementing monitoring protocols to assess the state of planted sites. Geolocation and planting activity data provided by recipients helps facilitate monitoring activities.  While there are regional differences to the monitoring protocols, in general monitoring activities include:

• Health and survival surveys conducted to assess seedling survival, tree health, and overall site conditions. Surveys often occur within the first few years after planting
• Free-to-Grow surveys undertaken periodically up to 15 years after planting to track tree growth and development, ensuring plantations meet specific criteria for regeneration and reach a free-to-grow status, where trees are expected to grow to maturity.
• Advanced technical surveys capture ultra-high-resolution imagery from aerial and drone surveys of select sites and support the development of spectral models. This information is used by researchers to improve methods for remotely detecting changes in vegetation health, improve estimates of tree survival and growth rates and ultimate reduce monitoring costs.

Ensuring long-term benefits

In addition to monitoring the health and survival of planted trees, the site visits and technical surveys will also help ensure that recipients are meeting their funding agreement conditions. This is part of our compliance monitoring.

This Long-Term Monitoring Plan is designed to be evergreen and flexible. It will be continuously updated to address opportunities and challenges, including the integration of new technologies. This approach helps us incorporate the latest innovations and improve our monitoring and verification processes based on our experiences, ensuring effective monitoring and planting activity verification.

Contact Us

For more details about the Long-Term Monitoring Plan, please contact the 2BT program.