“With over 80 percent of Americans living in metropolitan areas, the Forest Service is expanding our work in places like New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.  America has 100 million acres of urban forests, and through our Urban and Community Forestry program, we are providing assistance to 8,550 communities, home to more than half of our entire population.  Our goal is a continuous network of healthy forested landscapes, from remote wilderness areas to shady urban neighborhoods, parks, and greenways.

One restoration partnership for urban areas is the Urban Waters Federal Partnership.  The White House officially launched the partnership last June in Baltimore. It includes 11 different federal agencies, and it is designed to restore the health of urban watersheds, most of them at least partly forested. Seven pilot sites have been selected, and the Forest Service is taking the lead on three of them—in Baltimore, where the headwaters of the Patapsco River and the Jones Falls are in rural landscapes to the north and west; in Denver, where we are working with Denver Water to restore forested landscapes damaged by the Hayman Fire in 2002; and in northwestern Indiana, part of the greater Chicago area, where we are working through Chicago Wilderness.”

Read the complete speech here.

Facilitator: Kathy Blaha, Kathy Blaha Consulting

To RSVP, please send an email to info@cityparksalliance.org by COB Friday, August 26.

Leafsnap contains beautiful high-resolution images of leaves, flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to include the trees of the entire continental United States.

This website shows the tree species included in Leafsnap, the collections of its users, and the team of research volunteers working to produce it.  Visit www.leafsnap.com to download your free iPhone app!

Researchers, led by U.S. Forest Service scientists, will hire field crews to gather information on the condition of forests from approximately 1,000 sites in five western states – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington – to compile data for a comparative study on the health of trees in urban areas. The result will be a network of permanently located plots in urbanized areas that can be monitored to obtain information on their health and resiliency.

“This project will help city planners improve the quality of life in American cities,” said project leader John Mills of the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station’s Resource Monitoring and Assessment Program. “Urban trees are the hardest working trees in America – they beautify our neighborhoods and reduce pollution.”

This is the first time in the Pacific states that systematic information is being collected on the health of trees in urban areas. Determining the current health and extent of specific urban forests will help forest managers better understand how urban forests adapt to climate change and other issues. Urban trees cool cities, save energy, improve air quality, strengthen local economies, reduce storm water runoff and enliven neighborhoods.

The study supports President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative (AGO) by helping planners determine where to establish urban parks and green spaces and how to maintain them. AGO takes as its premise that the protection of our natural heritage is an objective shared by all Americans. Parks and green spaces improve a community’s economy, health, quality of life and social cohesion. In cities and towns across the country, parks can generate tourism and recreation dollars and improve investment and renewal. Time spent in nature also improves the emotional and physical well-being of children and adults alike.

Urban forests will change as the climate changes — shifts in species composition, growth rates, mortality and susceptibility to pests are all possible. Having a baseline of urban forest conditions will help local resource managers and planners understand and articulate the contributions urban forests make, such as carbon sequestration, water retention, energy savings and quality of life for residents. Over the longer term, monitoring will help to determine if and how urban forests are adapting to changing conditions, and could shed some light on potential mitigations.

The project is being carried out in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Forestry, California Polytechnic State University, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Washington Department of Natural Resources, Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the Hawaii Urban Forestry Council.

Work on the initial plot installation will continue through 2013, with a large amount of data gathering planned for 2012.

The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.

i-Tree v.4, made possible by a public-private partnership, provides urban planners, forest managers, environmental advocates and students is a free tool to measure the ecological and economic value of the trees in their neighborhoods and cities.  The Forest Service and its partners will offer free and easily accessible technical support for the i-Tree suite.

“Urban trees are the hardest working trees in America,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Urban trees’ roots are paved over, and they are assaulted by pollution and exhaust, but they keep working for us.”

The i-Tree suite of tools has helped communities gain funding for urban forest management and programs by quantifying the value of their trees and the environmental services trees provide.

One recent i-Tree study found that street trees in Minneapolis provided $25 million in benefits ranging from energy savings to increased property values. Urban planners in Chattanooga, Tenn., were able to show that for every dollar invested in their urban forests, the city received $12.18 in benefits. New York City used i-Tree to justify $220 million for planting trees during the next decade.

“Forest Service research and models on the benefits of urban trees are now in the hands of people who can make a difference in our communities,” said Paul Ries, director of Cooperative Forestry for the Forest Service. “The work of Forest Service researchers, the best in the world, is not just sitting on a shelf, but is now being widely applied in communities of all sizes, around the world, to help people understand and leverage the benefits of trees in their communities.”

Since the initial release of the i-Tree tools in August 2006, more than 100 communities, non-profit organizations, consultants and schools have used i-Tree to report on individual trees, parcels, neighborhoods, cities, and even entire states.

“I am proud to be part of a project that is doing so much good for our communities,” said Dave Nowak, lead i-Tree researcher for the Forest Service Northern Research Station. ” i-Tree will foster a better understanding of the importance of green space in our cities and neighborhoods, which is so important in a world where development and environmental change are stark realities.”
The most important improvements in i-Tree v.4:

• i-Tree will reach a broader audience in educating people on the value of trees. i-Tree Design is designed to be easily used by homeowners, garden centers, and in school classrooms. People can use i-Tree Design and its link to Google maps to see the impact of the trees in their yard, neighborhood and classrooms, and what benefits they can see by adding new trees. i-Tree Canopy and VUE with their links to Google maps now also make it much easier and less expensive for communities and managers to analyze the extent and values of their tree canopy, analyses that up to this point have been prohibitively expensive for many communities.
• i-Tree will also expand its audience to other resource management professionals. i-Tree Hydro provides a more sophisticated tool for professionals involved in stormwater and water quality and quantity management. Hydro is a tool that can be applied immediately to help communities evaluate and address the impacts of their urban forests on stream flow and water quality that could be helpful in meeting state and national (EPA) clean water and stormwater regulations and standards.
• With each new release of i-Tree, the tools become easier to use and more relevant to the users. i-Tree developers are continually addressing feedback from users and adjusting and improving the tools so that they are easier to use by a much broader audience. This will only help to increase its use and impact not only in the United States but around the world.

Click here for more information.

Applications for the 2011 Nature Hills Nursery Green America Awards will be accepted nationwide until April 1, 2011. For more information and t o apply for the 2011 award online, visit the website at www.naturehills.com/green_america_awards.aspx

Join us for a Webinar on February 3

Before you log-on to the webinar, please download the Arbor Week Toolkit. We’ll be referencing this document during the call.

Suggestions received through February 24, 2011, will be considered for Great Places in America designation in 2011. For more information on how to suggest your favorite Great Place, visit APA’s website.

For more information about the app, what it does and how to get it, visit UC Berkeley’s website or OakMapper.org.