i-Tree Research Suite
Overview
The i-Tree Research Suite is a collection of peer-reviewed models to analyze the benefits of trees and other landscape attributes and assist in forest advocacy and ecosystem health. While free technical support is not available for the Research Suite, the i-Tree Team offers contracted services include expert consultation, custom simulations, specialized reports, and the development of tailored modeling tools.
For questions about the Research Suite or to discuss potential collaborations, please contact i-Tree Support <info@itreetools.org>. Visit the Core Tools listing for more user-friendly tools that make ecosystem services science accessible to broad audiences. Use of the i-Tree Research Suite code indicates acceptance of the EULA.
Introductory Materials
Presentations
- Watch: Introduction to i-Tree Cool Air
- Slides: i-Tree Tools Help Strategically Manage Urban Forests
- Slides: i-Tree Tools Assist with Strategically Designing Tree Cover and Improving Community Resilience
Recent Projects
i-Tree Cool Air
New York State Urban Heat Islands: Extreme Heat Toolkit (2026)
Evaluating Urban Canopy's Role in Alleviating Extreme Heat (2023)
National Assessment of Air Temperature Effects from Trees on Human Health (2022)
i-Tree Hydro
GLRI Land Use Planning Impacts on Near Shore Pollution Loading in the Great Lakes (2024)
GLRI Forest Planning for Watershed Health (2021)
Research Suite Tools
- i-Tree HydroPlus: a unified C++ codebase for various environmental models that share common algorithms. Models include:
- i-Tree Hydro: a statistically-distributed hydrology model simulating the effects of land cover changes on water quantity and quality, unique in explicitly modeling vegetation processes (Wang et al., 2008).
- Green Infrastructure: Addition to i-Tree Hydro which simulates and measures the benefits of green infrastructure installations.
- i-Tree Cool Air: a spatially-explicit air temperature model simulating the effects of land cover changes using i-Tree Hydro's water budget and an energy budget that explicitly accounts for vegetation processes (Yang et al., 2013).
- i-Tree Cool River: a river temperature model for simulating the effects of channel morphology, riparian shading, tributaries, stormwater inflow, groundwater mixing, and river restoration by using a set of 1D advection, dispersion, and energy flux equations (Abdi & Endreny, 2019).
- i-Tree Buffer: a nutrient hotspot mapping tool, based on a contributing area dispersal area (CADA) nonpoint-source (NPS) water quality model (Stephan & Endreny, 2016).
- i-Tree Hydro: a statistically-distributed hydrology model simulating the effects of land cover changes on water quantity and quality, unique in explicitly modeling vegetation processes (Wang et al., 2008).
- WeatherPrep weather preprocessor: a weather pre-processor required to create weather inputs for i-Tree HydroPlus (Hirabayashi & Endreny, 2025).
- i-Tree Stormwater Credit Calculator: web-based tool to quantify avoided runoff and associated nutrient load from a planting project, powered by i-Tree Hydro simulations
- i-Tree Energy: a building energy balance model coded in Python, mechanistically simulating the heating and cooling energy savings benefits for buildings with nearby trees.
- Tree Compensation Calculator: data tables and a calculator to estimate the number of trees (or monetary value) needed to compensate for the loss of a healthy tree of any size (Nowak & Aevermann, 2019).