Want to toss that tree? Get a permit first, tree group proposes - Seattle, WA

Want to toss that tree? Get a permit first, Seattle tree group proposes

Let's say you want to get rid of an old tree on your property. You want more light in your yard, sun on your solar panels, view to the mountains. You'd simply hire an arborist or chop it down yourself, right?

Not so fast, says a city advisory panel. Under a proposal to be discussed this week, the Seattle Urban Forestry Commission wants the city to set up a permit system that would track and regulate tree removals on private properties.

The issue is sure to trigger more hot air in the city, which has long been wrestling with how to balance individual property rights and the common good of trees. Seattle has been revising its tree-protection code for the last three years -- taking note of sparring tree lovers, homeowners and developers -- all in the name of significantly growing its tree canopy.

Trees are worth the early effort - Flint, MI

Trees are worth the early effort | MLive.com

Trees are often underestimated when it comes to appreciating their many benefits.
Besides enhancing landscapes and increasing the value of our homes, a tree’s leafy canopy helps reduce pollution and lower cooling costs. Trees can also serve as a windbreak and reduce heating costs.

When I was growing up, the trees my parents planted in my yard started their lives as markers for our baseball field. Today they shade most of the front yard on hot summer days.
Trees are a long-term investment. Some will stick around doing good things for our environment for more than 100 years, so it makes sense that they need a little extra attention during their early years. Given a solid beginning, most trees will require little more than an annual inspection and a slow drip hose during extreme drought.

Several new efforts are under way to focus on developing and caring for the urban tree canopy. You can learn how to select, plant and care for trees at the annual Keep Genesee County Beautiful Conference (810-767-9696) on March 5. If you want to purchase trees for your yard, contact the Genesee Conservation District (810-230-8766, ext. 5.) Its annual tree sale is on now and orders can be placed through mid-April. The trees will be available for pick-up the last weekend in April.

Big trees: new national champion ponderosa pine found - Medford, OR.

Record ponderosa pine discovered | City Region | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

Unless you are an eagle soaring above the conifer forest or a big-tree hunter with an eagle eye, chances are you wouldn’t give the ponderosa pine a second glance.

After all, it is but one of many wooden spires reaching into the green forest canopy high overhead in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

But mammoth-tree hunters Michael Taylor of Trinity County, Calif., and Mario Vaden of Beaverton instantly knew this month that they had discovered a new pine king.

“We were walking along, saw the top of the tree sticking up, and we both said, ‘Wow!’ ” Taylor said. “I knew right away it was the tallest.”

Mayor's 15th annual tree planting partners with Canopy NGO, others with planting to celebrate Tu Bishvat - San Jose, CA

Janet Duca Norton: An especially memorable planting of a tree - San Jose Mercury News

A very Palo Alto project is the annual Mayor's Tree Planting and party. This year's 15th such event marked a significant milestone for the city's partnership with Canopy, the non-profit organization that looks after Palo Alto's trees.

It was a first-time collaboration with the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center at the Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto. Canopy's board chairwoman, Susan Ellis, welcomed more than 130 guests to the Jan. 20 event that featured the planting of a Cedar of Lebanon tree at the entrance to the new Center. The tree planting coincided with Tu Bishvat, the Jewish holiday for trees.

Montreal sees tree canopy, greening as part of urban heat island mitigation strategy - Montreal, Canada

Cities fee ling the heat

To combat the heat island effect, Montreal has been slowly doubling its green spaces from three per cent of the Island to six per cent, which is the average for most cities in Canada. DeSousa said the city is also planting more trees. Some communities like Rosemont are requiring that white roofs replace asphalt. St. Laurent, Verdun and several other areas are planting trees to expand their canopy to up to 40 per cent. In the last few years, St. Laurent, where DeSousa is borough mayor, alone has planted 13,046 full grown and seedling/ sapling trees with a net gain of about 11,000 trees. Not only will this help cool the municipality and retain water, it will also consume more carbon dioxide. A heavy tree canopy can reduce temperatures several degrees.

Watergate Residents to NPS: Those Trees Ruin Our View - Washington, DC

Watergate Residents to NPS: Those Trees Ruin Our View - DCist

Oh Watergate residents. In today's privileged people complaining about ridiculous things story, we give you this: Watergate residents are petitioning the National Park Service to cut down trees along the Potomac. Because the trees ruin their views from their condos. And decrease their property values. And they live in the Watergate, don't you know.

The response? Harriet Tregoning, a D.C. planning director and member of the National Capital Planning Commission, told the Georgetown Dish, "If every time someone’s view is obstructed, we cut trees down, it would be devastating to the city."

Tree canopy assessment to aid planting in Adrian - Adrian, MI

Tree canopy assessment to aid planting in Adrian - Adrian, MI - The Daily Telegram

A new assessment of Adrian’s tree canopy will help the city prioritize where it plants new trees, superintendent of parks and forestry Justin Combs said.

Among other things, the assessment looked at what portion of the city is covered by trees and how the trees are divided among different land uses, and it prioritized the best places to plant trees for maximum benefit.

The assessment was done with the help of a $22,400 grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and an $11,200 match from the city’s Fee Estate and storm water utilities funds.

Groups work together to plant forested buffers to improve water quality - Charlotte, NC

Forest starts with a sea of saplings - CharlotteObserver.com

Nearly 2,300 plastic tubes have popped up like pins on a pin cushion along Little Sugar Creek in Charlotte's Belmont neighborhood.

The sight of so many plant supports is a sign something important is taking shape in this stretch of floodplain between Parkwood and Belmont avenues just east of uptown.

And what could be more important than protecting the water we drink and the air we breathe?

Several local agencies worked together through a program called Creek ReLeaf to bring the 15 varieties of trees to Belmont.

District adopts urban forest plan - Sechelt, BC

District adopts urban forest plan | Local News | Coast Reporter, Sunshine Coast, BC

The District of Sechelt has recently adopted an urban forest plan to guide forest policy and planning in Sechelt for the next 50 to 100 years.

The plan makes recommendations around managing invasive species in the urban forest, dealing with diseased trees and maintaining a healthy forest bio-diversity. There are also parts of the plan that make recommendations to address threats to the community infrastructure from forest fires to tree-related hazards.

According to the executive summary of the plan, Sechelt’s urban forest is defined as the total collection of trees, soils and associated plants growing within district municipal boundaries, in parks and yards, along roadways and paths, including both public and private lands.

Learn about county urban tree canopy plan at Arbor Day event - Manatee County, FL

Tree lovers to gather for Florida Arbor Day | HeraldTribune.com

Manatee County's first collaborative Florida Arbor Day Presentation will bring together the Tree Boards of Manatee County's municipalities, government staff, elected officials and individuals interested in implementing best practices in urban forests.

Those attending will learn about the first Manatee County Tree Canopy Analysis. A limited number of native trees will be given away to plant for Florida Arbor Day at homes or businesses.

Stimulus funds will help Athens grow canopy - Athens, GA

Stimulus funds will help Athens grow || OnlineAthens.com:
Workers are preparing to plant up to 150 new hardwood trees with $30,000 in federal stimulus funding the Athens-Clarke Landscape Management Division received late last year.
Landscape Management officials hired Watkinsville-based Lotus Landscape Design to plant half of the trees by Jan. 31.
The trees are expected to help cool developed urban areas, control erosion and slow the flow of stormwater runoff, according to Andrew Saunders, community forestry coordinator for landscape management.

Get a Free Tree at Today's Riverfront Arbor Day Celebration - Bradenton, FL

Get a Free Tree at Today's Riverfront Arbor Day Celebration - The Bradenton Times - Free News for Bradenton, FL and Manatee County

Manatee County citizens are invited to attend Manatee County’s first collaborative Florida Arbor Day Presentation on January 21, Friday, from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. at the Manatee Players Riverfront Theatre located at 102 Old Main Street/12th Street West in downtown Bradenton.  This informative public outreach will bring together the Tree Boards of Manatee County’s municipalities, government staff, elected officials and private sector of professionals as well as facilitate in implementing best practices in our urban forests. 
 

Admission is free. A limited number of native trees will be given free to attendees to plant for Florida Arbor Day at their homes or businesses.

Palo Alto polling community on city's trees - Palo Alto, CA

Palo Alto Online : Palo Alto polling community on city's trees
Palo Alto community members who would like to stake a claim in the state of the city's tree canopy have been solicited to participate in a survey of values and concerns about Palo Alto's trees.

The survey is conducted by the Department of Planning and Community Environment, which is creating an Urban Forest Master Plan to maintain and enhance the canopy.

"Our vision for Palo Alto trees is being developed through the survey in collaboration with the Palo Alto community," Public Works arborist Eric Krebs said.

Earth Day Network plants 1,000,000th tree - Los Angeles, CA

Earth Day Group Plants 1M Trees With Help From ‘Avatar’ Sales « CBS Los Angeles- News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of LA
The Earth Day Network says it has exceeded its goal of planting one million trees worldwide, including several here in Los Angeles.
The Washington-based group announced Wednesday that 1,006,639 trees were planted on six continents last year by 31,000 individuals with 17 partner organizations. The network says the plantings were made possible with support from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and its Avatar Blu-ray and DVD.

The Portland Plan releases plans for the city's Urban Forest - Portland, OR

Urban Forest:
Portland’s existing tree canopy covers about 26% of Portland’s land area. The current goal is to have trees cover at least 33% of the city. The tree canopy is most dense in natural areas, such as Forest Park, other parts of the West Hills, on and around Powell Butte and other eastside buttes, and parts of Pleasant Valley in the southeast. Areas with the most concentrated urban development, particularly the Central City, and also industrial areas have the sparsest canopy.

Council considers funding for 1,000 downtown trees to bring city-wide 9,000 tree effort to 7,000 trees - San Antonio, TX

SA Council Asked To Approve Trees - San Antonio & Texas News Story - KSAT San Antonio:
In an ongoing effort to revitalize the heart of San Antonio and restore the city's disappearing tree canopy, City Council members will consider spending $500,000 to plant 1,000 trees in the central business district.
Watch Tim Gerber's Report | Slideshow: Tree Project Proposal
'It's the decade of downtown and trees are a part of that,' said Paula Stallcup, director of Downtown Operations.
If the one-time expenditure is approved, the city would begin planting the trees in a variety of areas downtown. According to Stallcup, most won't be planted in parks.

Friends of Trees, now in its 21st year, recently celebrated its 400,000th planting - Vancouver, WA

Friends welcome trees to the city | The Columbian

Unrelenting rain soaked a group of Evergreen High School students Saturday morning as they stood along 155th Avenue watching the proper technique for planting a tree.

“I do realize it’s raining,” event coordinator Jesse Batty told the students. “For people, this is not so good. But for trees, it’s great.”

The 15-foot-tall nursery-grown ash is now dormant, so the warm winter rain will encourage root growth as the tree adapts to its permanent home between the road and a neighbor’s backyard fence.

Volunteers ultimately planted 82 street trees on both sides of this four-block-long stretch through the Summerfield Homes subdivision. The city’s Urban Forestry Department will arrange to water the trees for the next couple of summers, in the latest effort to improve Vancouver’s urban tree canopy.

City Plants Trees To Stay Green - Charlottesville, VA

City Plants Trees To Stay Green - NBC29:
This month, Charlottesville Parks and Recreation embarked on an effort to plant hundreds of new trees around the city. It is part of a city-wide effort to keep Charlottesville green.

Charlottesville City Councilor David Brown explained, 'If you look at Charlottesville from above, you see a lot of tree canopy and a lot of tree cover but that does not happen by itself.'

New plantings already line Forest Hills Park and are taking root along McIntire Road. There will be around 200 trees varying in all species from oaks to maples.

Brian Daly, of the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department described why the city chose January to plant. 'During the dormant season when trees are not actively growing is the best time to plant, you can better ensure survivability of the tree going forward.'

The trees cost about $225 each. In all, the city will spend around $450,000. The hope is that they will help replace those that were lost in last year's storms.

For Chicago, cooling down may mean lightening up - Chicago, IL

For Chicago, cooling down may mean lightening up:
In Chicago’s fight to go green, the next step may be to turn gray.

Chicago is signing on as a member of the 100 Cool Cities Initiative. The initiative is a program seeking to offset global carbon emissions by encouraging installation of cool and reflective roofs and pavements in 100 major cities worldwide.

The initiative is spearheaded by Professor Hashem Akbari of Concordia University in Montreal, along with the White Roofs Alliance. Akbari is a founding member of the Heat Island Group and a leading researcher in the field of heat island mitigation.

The idea: reduce emissions and lower a city’s temperatures by installing lighter colored roofs and pavements instead of traditional asphalt roads and tar roofs. A lighter colored roof keeps a building cooler than a black roof by reflecting light instead of absorbing it.

Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby: New Urban Tree design competition - Boston, MA

THE BAC STUDENT DEVELOPMENT BLOG: Competition :: New Urban Tree:
The “New Urban Tree” is a design competition centered on the decreasing tree canopy in North American metropolitan areas. The city leaves little room for the implementation of the necessary amount of trees needed to maintain a proper ecological system. Your task it to develop, through the innovation of biomimicry, a non-biological structure that would function, more or less, as a natural tree would.

Tree equity — Los Angeles, CA

Tree equity — High Country News:
The Los Angeles community Sherman Oaks sounds like a place that should be verdant and laden with leafy trees. Not surprisingly, the students of Arbol University found that to be exactly true.

Yet the students, who were using trigonometry and other tools to collect data about Los Angeles’s urban tree canopy, were shocked at the disparity they found between the different neighborhoods they surveyed.

In Koreatown, a lower income community, the tree canopy was not only thinner, but the trees were much younger and more likely to be sick or affected by pests. Damaged sidewalks and other infrastructure problems also threatened the health of the trees there. And the obvious visual discrepancy between Sherman Oaks and the sparse vegetation of Koreatown raised questions in the students’ minds.

Bowie hopes to increase tree canopy with $35K grant - Bowie, MD

Bowie hopes to increase tree canopy with $35K grant:
The City of Bowie is using a $35,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to pursue a plan to allow city landowners could receive some money to plant trees and add to the value of their properties.

The $35,000 is being used by Bowie to hire a consultant to pull together available data so that the city can apply for tree-planting grants for use by property owners.

'The point is to have the data so we can get the grant money,' city Watershed Manager Tiffany Wright said. 'It's the first step forward in getting additional grant dollars.'

Based on the 2007 photos, about 46 percent of the city's land area is covered with trees, according to a canopy report done by the University of Vermont and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Sports v. Trees: Loss of trees upsets some neighbors - Charlotte, NC

Loss of trees upsets some neighbors:
Some neighbors of Covenant Day School in Matthews are crying foul over the school's new ball fields, currently under construction.

To accommodate its growth, including the addition of a high school, Covenant Day recently cleared about 18 acres of nearby land to build two soccer fields, a softball field and a baseball field, which are scheduled to be completed in March.

The land, which is in Covenant Day's Warner Park along N.C. 51, backs up to a row of homes in the Sardis Forest neighborhood.

Many of the residents are concerned about the damage the construction has done to what used to be a lush portion of the town's shrinking tree canopy.

Op-ed: Tree Canopy Goal seeks to plant trees to bring Bay's dead-zone back to life - Norfolk, VA

Op-ed: Norfolk Celebrating Trees | AltDaily : Creating and celebrating local culture in Norfolk and all of Hampton Roads.:
That’s right, you read correctly.

And it’s not planned by a hippie-loving, tree-hugging non-profit for this spring, but by our very own Mayor, going on right now.

Inspired by a tree-planting program in Norfolk’s sister city of Kitakyushu, Japan, Mayor Fraim has a new community partnership designed to honor Norfolk’s trees and the benefits we receive from them.

Pregnant? Surround yourself with tree canopy, Portland study shows - Portland, OR

Pregnant? Surround yourself with tree canopy, this Portland study shows - Portland parenting | Examiner.com: Yesterday Medical Research & Science writer Joe Rojas-Burke published an Oregonian article citing exciting findings from a study released late last year. Researchers found that moms living in more densely treed areas of Portland were less likely to deliver undersized babies, or SGA (Small for Gestational Age).

'Tree cover made no difference in the rate of pre-term births, but researchers found a consistent link to the prevalence of infants who were small for their gestational age,' writes Rojas-Burke. 'For each 10 percent increase in tree coverage within about 50 yards of a home, the rate of undersized newborns decreased by 1.42 per 1000 births. As it stands, about 70 of every 1,000 newborns in Portland are small for gestational age.'

$40,000 grant helps Annapolis replace old trees - Annapolis, MD

$40,000 grant helps Annapolis replace old trees - baltimoresun.com:
An environmental grant has funded tree planting in Annapolis as part of the city's effort to increase its canopy.

A grant from the Alliance of the Chesapeake Bay totaling $40,000 was used to plant 233 trees and 153 shrubs, including four willow oaks in the Historic District to replace older trees that were cut down in the summer because of safety concerns, city officials said.

The four willow oaks were planted at 183 and 193 Duke of Gloucester St. and at 122 and 123 Conduit St. Those trees replace a willow and northern red oak estimated at 70 to 80 years old, and a Siberian elm about 50 years old. They were each about 40 feet tall, but city arborist Jan Van Zutland examined the trees and declared them in bad health.

About two-thirds of the grant was used for planting trees and shrubs last fall. The remaining third of the grant was used recently to plant 42 trees and 24 shrubs throughout Annapolis, including the four replacement trees.

In 2006, the city entered into an agreement with the state Department of Natural Resources to increase the city's Urban Tree Canopy from an existing 42 percent to 50 percent by 2036. The city's UTC will be measured about every decade.

Proposed Tree Preservation Bylaw Could Have Enforcement Issues - Wellesley, MA

Proposed Tree Preservation Bylaw Could Have Enforcement Issues - Wellesley, MA Patch:
The bylaw, if drafted as a warrant article and then approved at Town Meeting March 28, would allow for tree removal required for construction and create a mechanism to maintain the tree canopy by replanting trees on a construction site, according to the Planning Board presentation Monday, Jan. 3.

The bylaw would apply to demolitions, new construction and additions that would increase a building’s footprint by 50 percent, and to trees that are 18 inches in caliper, which refers to the trunk diameter, in a setback area.

If a protected tree is removed, applicants must either replant trees at a ratio of 50 percent of the caliper inches lost or make a payment to the town Tree Bank, a site that would store removed trees, at a rate of $50 per caliper inch.

Alliance for Chesapeake Bay grant helps Annapolis reach Urban Tree Canopy goal - Annapolis, MD

City Hall: Economic development chief takes charge • Columnists (www.HometownAnnapolis.com - The Capital):
Four willow oaks were recently planted in the Historic District to replace the aging trees removed in August due to safety concerns.

The trees were planted at 183 and 193 Duke of Gloucester St. and at 122 and 123 Conduit St.

The money to replace the trees, as well as to plant trees in various other locations in the city, came from an Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay grant.

The grant totaled $40,000, of which two-thirds was used for planting numerous trees and shrubs last fall. The remaining third was used recently to plant 42 trees and 24 shrubs throughout Annapolis, including the four replacement trees. In all, 233 trees and 153 shrubs were planted with the grant money.