Ice Pruning May Benefit Urban Forest

By P.J. Lassek, Tulsa World, Okla.

Feb. 24–The winter storm exposed trees with existing problems, a city official says.

While most people view the aftermath of December’s ice storm as devastating to the city’s tree canopy, some forestry officials see it as a blessing in disguise.

Don’t misunderstand the officials’ stance, they say.

“We’re the biggest tree huggers around,” said Mark Bays, urban forestry coordinator for the state’s Department of Agriculture.

“I really see this event as a huge opportunity for the city,” he said.

The one thing the ice storm did, Bays said, was expose inferior, older trees.

“It identified those trees that likely had predisposed conditions that needed to be addressed,” he said.

But it’s not just the cleansing of older, inferior trees that presents Tulsa with an opportunity, he said.

Several years ago the city began to inventory trees in its most heavily used parks through a matching federal grant that totaled $45,755.

Of the estimated 20,000 trees on park-owned land, 14,609 were inventoried at that time by the Park Department using global positioning systems not only to map the

trees but to collect size and condition data.

Bays said this information allows the city easily to go into areas and fix problems by making good, deliberate replanting decisions.

The widespread tree damage, however, has left the city with a gap in some of its inventory information, said Maureen Turner, the city’s horticulturist.

There wasn’t enough grant money to inventory and assess the public spaces in Mohawk Park, Redbud Valley, the Creek Turnpike trail, and several other rustic areas and detention sites, she said.

The grant funds were spent on the parks with the highest usage, she said.

So Turner called Bays, who in turn called the U.S. Forest Service’s southern group of state foresters.

The group, which spans the southeastern states, was established to aid in urban forestry after the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The group not only is completing the inventory of city park areas but is also assessing storm data in those areas at no cost to the city. “These are trained tree specialists who can identify tree hazards and health issues,” Bays said.

Eight certified arborists have been in Tulsa for the past two weeks, Bays said.

Turner said the city’s inventory work and the help from Bays’ group is paying off.

Immediately after the ice storm, park officials were able to take the inventory maps they had and “hit the parks, assessing which trees had hangers and could be saved, and which needed to be removed,” she said.

Turner said when Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to assess park damage, they were very impressed with the inventory and assessment data.

“We met FEMA in Veterans Park and they had their little black boxes and did an assessment and their data matched exactly to the storm assessment the city had done before it knew FEMA would reimburse us,” Turner said.

The easily supplied maps of “before-and-after snapshots” of the trees proved extremely helpful and sped up the process, saving time and money, said Bill Boone, public assistance branch chief for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Of the 10,283 trees currently assessed that meet FEMA reimbursement requirements, 1,925 can be saved with corrective pruning and 834 need to be removed because they were severely damaged, Turner said. The rest had minor or no damage.

The assessment is not complete, she said, and just because a tree qualifies for FEMA reimbursement “does not mean we are removing it.”

Turner said the goal is to save all trees that don’t pose a hazard and then regreen the parks by creating diversity in species, selecting the right type of tree for certain sites and increasing trees in parks with fewer and better spacing of trees in crowded areas.

Bays said it is always difficult to see mature trees removed, but under certain circumstances it is necessary.

“The ice storm was one heck of a way to end our first 100 years,” Bays said. “But it created an opportunity for us to begin preparing the city’s tree canopy for the next 100 years.”

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All about trees

The most abundant trees in city parks:

Ash Elm Hackberry Hickory Maple Oak Pecan Pine Redbud Sycamore

Current assessment of tree damage in city parks:

–14,000 trees are GPS mapped, out of an estimated 20,000.

–10,283 trees deemed to qualify for FEMA reimbursement

–Of those, 1,925 can be saved

–834 damaged trees need to be removed

–The remaining trees received minimal or no damage

Source: Parks and Recreation Dept.

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Recommended replacement trees

Large trees

Red maple Green ash Bald cypress Blackgum Cedar elm Ginkgo (male) Honeylocust Kentucky Coffeetree Bur oak Southern magnolia Chinquapin oak Shumard oak Water oak Pecan Sweetgum Walnut

Medium trees

Lacebark elm Post oak Chinese pistache

Small trees

Flowering crabapple Crapemyrtle Flowering dogwood Deciduous holly Yaupon holly Saucer magnolia Eastern redbud Texas redbud American holly

Source: Tulsa Park and Recreation Department

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P.J. Lassek 581-8382 pj.lassek@tulsaworld.com

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Copyright (c) 2008, Tulsa World, Okla.

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