TMCnet News
Tree-tracking efforts take root in area towns(Blade, The (Toledo, OH) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 28--WAUSEON - Katie Corkle knows Wauseon's trees like nobody else. The high school senior spends much of her time with a portable global-positioning system unit, a rope, and about 1,400 trees - roughly half the city's forest. She methodically makes her way around the south side and through Wauseon's parks, recording species information, dimensions, and exact location of all the trees on public property she can find. "I take a street," she said, explaining her modus operandi, "and go to the first tree. I identify the tree, oak, maple, or whatever, then I measure it. I take a length of rope and wrap it around the tree, then measure it. That way, they can go back in five years and see how it's grown. Then I take the GPS unit and mark the tree, plot the point on GPS, so after that, I can go back and put the information in the computer system." Miss Corkle's mandate from the city - as its "tree intern," she must catalogue all its trees and enter them into a GPS-based inventory - is one that more cities are considering. As the emerald ash borer - an invasive beetle whose larvae can kill an ash tree in as little as three years - spreads throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, municipal foresters need to know where to find their cities' ash trees. And even without the deadly pest, urban forest management is an area more municipalities take seriously, said Stephanie Miller, a Findlay-based regional urban forester with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Forestry. "Not a lot have them GPS'ed, although they do have them inventoried," Ms. Miller said of towns and cities in northwest Ohio. "At least 25 percent do, in one form or another. Some have done just ash inventories." Trees counts and analyses are something her colleagues and she have urged for years. "Just knowing where your trees are and how many you have and what kind allows you to prepare before these things [borers] get to your community," she said. "I would like to see more municipalities at least use an inventory and make it so that most of their tree-care decisions are based on that data, so they are not hopscotching around town and just reacting to citizens' concerns." She applauded Wauseon's decision to put time and money into a GPS inventory, as did Deborah Gangloff, executive director of American Forests, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group which, among its other missions, maintains the National List of Big Trees, a registry of the largest-known specimens of trees in the United States. "That's fabulous," Ms. Gangloff said of the Fulton County city's project. "We've seen a trend toward inventories: what kind of trees you have, their size, all the information you need to create and grow an urban forest." Decades before the emerald ash borer hitched a ride to North America from Asia, there was Dutch elm disease. That caused many cities to rethink their approach to trees. "We learned in the 1930s, if you plant the whole city in the same species, you can lose an entire urban forest," Ms. Gangloff said. So urban foresters try to make sure they have plenty of species of trees in their cities. "We did find a lot of our subdivisions were planted with one tree," Bowling Green municipal arborist David Bienemann said. In the four years he has worked for the city, he has overseen a GPS project and formed a care and maintenance plan for Bowling Green's 7,500 trees. "We've tried to diversify the subdivisions, so you have 10 to 20 species in the subdivision as opposed to one or two," he said. "The general rule of planting in the urban environment, you don't want more than 10 percent of one species, and you don't want more than 20 percent of one genus," Mr. Bienemann said, referring to the scientific groups and subgroups. With that in mind, and with his city's inventory in hand, he has made a few plans for Bowling Green. For one thing, no more maples - some 25 percent of the city's trees are maples - and certainly, no more ash. The GPS system has other benefits as well, he said. "Right now, we're GPS-ing all the road signs, then the utility equipment," he said. "I think for the long term, as the city keeps growing, it's going to be a lot easier to mange the city if we know where everything is. "Now that all the trees are identified, I can identify future planting sites, and … if we do a street widening, we can make the necessary corrections to save the trees from construction, or we can plant a new tree to fit that site. Software can tell me how far roots go. It allows the city the latitude to manage the city forest as the city grows." Ms. Miller agreed. "If you have the water lines, curb lines, power and sewer lines all GPS'ed, then you know where everything is in relation to each other," she said. "When an engineer is trying to do plans, they can plan around the trees." As for Wauseon's future, officials there are doing some planning too. "Our goal is for every tree removed, we'd like to plant two more," said Ivan Hite, who helped start Wauseon's tree commission. "We can see how many we have, and keep track of them, so we don't overload with certain species." And of course, Miss Corkle is an integral part of that. As she continues mapping the city's trees, she's learning plenty, both about trees and about people, especially as she maps and measures trees between city streets and private homes. "A lot of times, they'll come out on their front porch and say, 'What are you doing to my tree?'" Miss Corkle said. "Then I explain I'm the tree intern. A lot want advice about the trees on their properties." And while her job may seem tedious to some, the young woman known as "the tree hugger" to her colleagues in the parks and recreation department has grown to love it. "Every tree is different," she said. "They have different stories; they were either planted by a family or grew naturally. There's always something new and different." Contact Vanessa Winans at: [email protected] or 419-724-6168. |