Happy National Arbor Day!

Healthy trees have endless benefits for cities.

Today is National Arbor Day, and it’s a great time to think about the care and maintenance of trees around you. Are the trees in your yard healthy? Are the trees in your community healthy? The benefits that trees give us are endless.

Rain refreshes the land and nourishes the green landscape. But as houses, stores, schools, roads and paved areas increase and natural tree cover is lost, so is the absorbing effect of vegetation and soil. With no place to soak into the ground, the welcome rain can become costly stormwater runoff.

Without the benefit of trees and vegetated infrastructure, waterways become polluted as oils, heavy metal particles, and other harmful substances run into them. Fish and wildlife suffer, drinking water becomes expensive or impossible to reclaim, property values are reduced, and our living environment is degraded.

Planting the right trees in the right places conserves energy and reduces your energy bills, while helping to fight climate change. See how properly placed trees save energy by providing summer shade, winter warmth, and winter windbreaks. Trees also absorb carbon dioxide, give off oxygen, and store carbon.

Try out the benefit calculator! All you need to do is enter information about a street-side tree and learn about the benefits it provides. Street-side trees are typically located in front yards, medians, parkways, planting strips, or other common planting areas adjacent to streets.

Learn more about the benefits from trees on the Arbor Day Foundation webpage.

DNR’s Urban and Community Forestry Program is working with communities statewide to care and maintain urban forests, and you can find out more about the care of trees by talking with a certified arborist or visit DNR’s website at www.dnr.wa.gov/urbanforestry.

 

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Study shows brain gains benefit from a walk in the park

Photo: International Society of Arboriculture/Bugwood.org

We’ve always felt that visiting green spaces like parks and forests reduces our stress and makes us feel more creative, but now an innovative study from Scotland indicates that you really can ease brain fatigue by strolling through a calming natural space. An experiment using volunteers hooked to lightweight, portable electroencephalograms—devices that measure brain wave patterns—confirms that even a short walk in the park lessens brain fatigue.

But what if you don’t live in soggy western Washington? That’s why we encourage well-planned and tended trees in urban spaces and other communities. And that’s also why we celebrate Arbor Day all month-long in April. Citizens, governments, educators, organizations and others are working to make greener spaces through trees.

For those of you who want to read about the scientific methods and conclusions of the researchers in Scotland, here’s a link to an abstract of their study (‘The urban brain: analysing outdoor physical activity with mobile EEG‘) published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

For the rest of us, this New York Times blog about the study breaks it down into plan talk; namely, take a walk.

Find out if your city is one of the 83 in Washington designated as a Tree City USA–-a national recognition for the cities and towns that go the extra mile to manage and care for healthy urban forests.

DNR assists local governments that want to improve the health of their urban forests. This spring, our Urban and Community Forestry Program has provided crews from Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) and Puget SoundCorps to help several city and county governments restore urban forests.

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Hooray for Arbor Day in Washington: Are you living in a ‘Tree City USA’ community?

Photo: Guy Kramer.

Today is Arbor Day, a celebration of trees and all the great things they do for us in Washington State. We celebrate Arbor Day through a special program called Tree City USA® which recognizes cities and towns that go the extra mile to manage and care for healthy urban forests. That extra mile includes planning the maintenance of vigorous city trees, now and into the future.

Now is a great time to properly prune your trees. As you do, be sure to never top a tree. Topping—radical removal of a large part of the tree’s crown—may get rid of a few problem limbs, but in the long run you will end up doing more maintenance each year. After a tree is topped, it grows suckers (weakly attached limbs); you’ll have a mess on your hands and a potentially hazardous situation. Learn to property prune now to lessen the damage next time storms hit.

Find out if your city is a Tree City USA–there may be special programs to celebrate trees in your community this month.

If your city isn’t part of the Tree City USA Program, contact your city officials to help them plan Arbor Day celebrations next year. Sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation in cooperation with the US Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters, Tree City USA® provides technical assistance and national recognition for urban and community forestry programs in thousands of towns and cities.

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Tree planting grants offered to local Tree Cities; first come, first served

Increasing the tree canopy is becoming a bigger issue for cities, as they plan for healthier communities.

DNR’s Urban and Community Forestry Program is excited to announce that funding is available for tree planting projects. Only cities who are one of our Tree City USA communities can apply. Nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, or tribal governments may apply in partnership with designated communities.

 The 2013 Tree City USA Tree Planting Grants provide financial assistance to communities working to achieve the goal of a self-sustaining community forestry program by properly planting trees to increase canopy cover. Applicants can apply for up to $10,000 for trees to be planted in their community to enhance urban forests. Although there is a lot involved when planting trees, the funding may not be used to buy the tree seedlings.Though not required, matching funds are encouraged as a demonstration of community commitment to the urban forestry program. Staff and volunteer time, tree planting materials, and other associated costs may be used as match. Projects must be completed by December 31, 2013.

Check out the grant resources webpage for more information on tree planting grants.

Funds for this project are made possible through the USDA Forest Service in cooperation with DNR’s Urban and Community Forestry Program. This is a one-time grant opportunity available to Washington’s Tree City USA Communities.

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Remove the 3 D’s from your trees; learn what, when, and how to prune

This is a screen shot from a National Arbor Day Foundation web animation explaining how to prune trees properly and when.

Are your trees looking straggly, growing and spreading out aimlessly? Before you prune a tree, be sure you pruning at the right time of year.

A recent blog from the National Association of State Foresters says that trees are dormant through early March. This is true in some cases, but it’s important to check for the appropriate time of year to prune the specific type of tree you own.

Meanwhile, now is a good time to remove those dead, diseased, and damaged branches (the 3 D’s). These problem branches can cost more money and cause more maintenance headaches if not cared for right away. You also may want to remove branches that cross and rub against each other when the appropriate time comes to prune that tree. Whatever you do, prune no more than 25 percent of your tree’s canopy in any one year.

What are we talking about specifically? DNR recommends two resources to help you decide what to prune, when to prune, and how to prune: 

• The National Arbor Day Foundation Tree Pruning Guide Information
• The U.S. Forest Service brochure, How to Prune Trees

If you have a tree that can be pruned now, the wound from pruning will rapidly close just before new growth emerges. Also, prune trees while they’re young to help avoid expensive tree care later.

See what other resources DNR’s Urban and Community Forestry Program has to offer.

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New study by U.S. Forest Service links beautiful, healthy trees to our own health

Mature trees enhance this urban street. Photo: Guy Kramer.

It should be no surprise that our natural environment gives us a sense of calmness, reducing stress, but now we have more solid evidence of a link, specifically between healthy people and healthy trees.

A new U.S. Forest Service report, “The Relationship between Trees and Human Health,” was recently printed in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. According to Forest Service researcher Geoffrey Donovan, Americans living in areas of diseased trees had higher rates of cardiovascular disease and lower-respiratory disease when compared with areas that have uninfected trees.

Donovan said that it could have been tempting to conclude some other factor in the higher mortality rates, such as income or education. But, he said, the researchers saw the same patterns repeated over and over in counties with very different demographic make-ups. This finding adds to the growing evidence that the natural environment provides major public health benefits.

Currently, Washington State is facing serious forest health problems. As DNR addresses these issues with landowners and land managers, it’s important to know that having healthy trees isn’t just about reducing wildfire risks. It’s more inclusive of a holistic approach to our well being.

Drop by the DNR Facebook page to join in a discussion of the link between human health and healthy community forests.

Learn more about tree health in your community at DNR’s Forest Health and Urban and Community Forestry Programs.

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Tough crews work hard to restore water quality, one project at a time

 

Washington Conservation Corps creates an outdoor classroom at the Water Resources Education Center in Vancouver. Photo by Janet Pearce

Washington Conservation Corps and Puget SoundCorps crews are making great strides in restoring urban forests to improve water quality in the Lower Columbia River and the Puget Sound.

First, the Washington Conservation Corps is working with the Water Resources Education Center in Vancouver to create an outdoor learning classroom. The crew is creating the classroom in an area that was once made up of dirt, sand, and grass. They are enhancing the area with trees and vegetation that will include stations for kids to learn about their natural environment. They also will learn about the important benefits that trees and plants offer to our communities. See how the crew worked with volunteers on Martin Luther King Day to clean up Columbia River beaches and improve native forests through planting.

In Pierce County, the Puget SoundCorps is working along the Duwamish River and the Green River Trail in the City of Tukwila. The crew installed 8000 feet of erosion and sediment control in preparation for restoration activities in the riparian zone. They then cleared 32,000 square feet of Himalayan blackberry infestation and planted live stakes in the cleared space. In total, 650 whips of two willow species and 250 red osier dogwood were planted over an 8000 square foot area. 

WCC crew is creating an outdoor classroom for kids to learn about the natural world around them. Photo by Janet Pearce

The SoundCorps also is working in King County to rejuvenate rain gardens in the Bridle Trails neighborhood in the City of Kirkland. After clearing 4000 square feet of invasive, non-native plants, debris, and sediment from the existing rain gardens, they installed a wide variety of native plants, approximately 650 in all. Thirty-five cubic yards of mulch were spread and the swales of the rain gardens were reinforced with 12 tons of river rock, all laid by hand.

Both crews are working through the Urban Forestry Restoration Project that helps local governments improve the health and stormwater management capacity of their urban forests (parks, rights-of-way, open space, watersheds, etc.).

The project is funded through the 2012 Jobs Now Bill (Engrossed Senate Bill 5127) and is administered by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’ Urban and Community Forestry Program.

For more information, visit the Urban Forestry Restoration Project online, or send an email to Micki McNaughton or call her at (360) 902-1637.

 

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Two of the nation’s best urban forests are right here in the Pacific Northwest

Local people have always known that Seattle and Portland have beautiful, healthy trees, so it was no surprise to see that American Forests has named these cities as two of the ten best U.S. cities for urban forests.

American Forests, the oldest national, nonprofit, conservation organization in the country, advocates for the protection and expansion of America’s forests.

The organization announced its list for the ten best U.S. cities for urban forests:  Austin, Charlotte, Denver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Through a U.S. Forest Service-funded project, American Forests found that these ten cities showed great investment in their urban forests from the city management level down to community volunteers.

Seattle City Arborist, Nolan Rundquist, says it’s great to be included. Seattle is working on updating its urban forest plan with a goal of increasing the canopy so it will cover 30 percent of the city by 2037. 

American Forests took on this project to help people (and city leaders) better understand the critical value of urban forests in their cities — to their own lives, health, economies and well-being of their communities, and to, therefore, invest in their urban forests. Proactive individuals are key to maintaining urban forests. These people recognize that trees around them are not just pretty shade providers, but are essential elements of the natural fabric of the planet that we depend upon for survival.

Not only did the project find that these cities are committed to maintaining the health of their urban forests, but that they also recognize the full range of benefits they provide from driving tourism revenue to lowered heating and cooling costs. This project showcases the many values that forests and trees bring to an urban environment.

To learn more about the 10 best cities for urban forests, visit American Forests’ website at http://www.americanforests.org/10bestcities.

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It makes cents to train your trees

This tree was definitely whacked with a tree trimmer. PHOTO BY: Community Canopy

A story recently came across the urban forestry desk, titled “An Urban Forest in Peril.” It seems that the Lexington, Kentucky urban forest is in serious trouble. Lexington’s treescape has been declining over the past decade. Culprits include insects, disease and climate change. But, mostly, we are to blame. Lexington is not alone.

Have you noticed a decline of trees in your community? Many urban forests throughout the nation are in serious trouble. Even as well-meaning citizens and politicians in our municipalities are committed to and are planting trees, there often follows a shocking amount of tree mortality.

Unfortunately, money spent to plant and maintain trees in parks and on street rights-of-way, is also spent to pay people to destroy those trees. What? How is that possible?   

No, don’t even mention ice storms; my trees can’t take it!

The weight of ice broke several large limbs from this tree in Olympia last January. Photo: DNR

Light rain, heavy rain, showers, scattered showers, rain at times, chance of showers… however you say it, the Washington State weather forecast calls for rain. And we all know that rain could turn into ice later this winter. It did last January.

With this in mind, did you know that some trees can resist ice damage better than others? Certain tree species are more resistant to breakage than others, reducing damage to both trees and property. For example, the dense, springy wood of many oaks breaks less easily than the softer, brittle wood of poplars. It can pay big dividends to do some research before you plant new trees!

Ice storms are caused by super-cooled rain that falls on surfaces, such as tree branches, that are at or below freezing. Accumulations of ice can increase weight on branches to the breaking point and wreak havoc on anything underneath the trees.

Trees with a broad, dense crown and weak, brittle wood, such as flowering plum, are more susceptible to ice damage than trees with narrow crowns, wide branch angles and dense springy wood, such as western red cedar. Dead or diseased limbs are especially vulnerable to breaking when ice accumulates. 

For best resistance to ice breakage, select a tree that is native to the Pacific Northwest. Trees from areas that do not experience ice storms are more susceptible to ice damage because they did not evolve to handle the additional weight – and cold! If you want to use species that are susceptible to ice damage, locate them where falling branches will not pose a hazard to people, structures, transportation routes, or power lines.

Ice storm susceptibility should not be the only reason for selecting trees for landscape plantings, but the numbers of susceptible trees should be limited to areas that will not pose a threat to utilities, buildings, or people.

If you would like a copy of “Trees and Ice Storms; the development of ice storm-resistant urban tree populations,” contact us at urban_forestry@dnr.wa.gov.

An  arborist certified through the International Society of Arborists (ISA) can help evaluate your tree(s) and prescribe the best course of action to treat a tree. You can find a certified arborist near you by looking in the phone book under “tree services” (be sure to look for the ISA Certified Arborist shield), or go to http://www.treesaregood.org/.

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