[CANUFNET] CANUFNET Digest, Vol 52, Issue 12

Thu Mar 19 18:22:53 EDT 2009

Good Day:

Increasing canopy cover within a municipality is a noble thought. However, it may be more appropriate to, firstly, determine if this new tree planting effort, to increase canopy coverage, is going to be a "viable" and "cost effective" effort.

"Is your own house in order?"

Is the municipality's infrastructure designed in such a manner as to allow these trees to grow to their maximum genetic potential? That is, have they allowed a sufficint amount of space for resources and soil moisture management? I'm not talking about wider blvds. as most trees have the abilty to grow rooting structures under sidwalks and are able ot colonize front yard areas of private lands. I am speaking to soil quality and quantity/depth of these locations. This in itself will have a positive impact on increasing canopy coverage with less replacement/maintenance from struggling/failed trees. 
Are the blvds draining properly? Treat every piece of blvd that is located between two driveways as a "pot" or pocket planting. Does the storm water that drains from the private lands, over the sidewalk and onto the blvd have access to the storm sewer or road base drain or does it super-saturate the blvd/tree pit, to slowly leech until the next rain event?

Planning and redesigning of roads, parks, commercial and industrial areas, both new or reconstructed, to address these requirements, should precede any tree planting efforts otherwise that 60mm Norway Maple will blossom into a frail 80mm tree, 10 years later, that is if it survived.

Then plant as many trees, of the correct species in the correct location, as your budget/council will allow.

Does the municipality have an inventory of its trees? Very important for many reasons.

Then target the real land mass in the municipality; private land, both residential and commercial/Industrial. 

Restrict/regulate the removal of trees on private property.

Make business/developers of land pay for proper design and planting through one of many agreements at the municipality's disposal. 
Awareness, education, publicity and incentive should all be used to encourage tree planting on private residential property.

Increasing canopy coverage in a proper manner is more than just planting additional trees and comes with a large cost/investment of time and money to plan and initiate. 

How much is your municipality willing to spend? 

I don't wish to be negative, just realistic.

Eugene Storozinski

--- On Thu, 3/19/09, canufnet-request at list.web.net <canufnet-request at list.web.net> wrote:

> From: canufnet-request at list.web.net <canufnet-request at list.web.net>
> Subject: CANUFNET Digest, Vol 52, Issue 12
> To: canufnet at list.web.net
> Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 4:00 PM
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Re: Canopy Cover (Julian Dunster)
>    2. Canopy Cover (Andy Kenney)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:57:43 -0700
> From: Julian Dunster <jadunster at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [CANUFNET] Canopy Cover
> To: Canadian Urban Forest Network
> <canufnet at list.web.net>
> Message-ID:
> 	<7444fa250903181157m1346a78y84b09ac0a29ef58e at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Since climate change is such a huge issue and its scale is
> so massive, I
> don't think there is anything that we can do at the
> urban forest level that
> will or even can make the sligtest diference globally (the
> same is true of
> trying to promote the UF as a means of effectively
> sequestering carbon).
> This is another issue where we need to define goals first
> of all. If the
> goal is to increase UF canopy in order to help ameleorate
> summer
> temperatures on  buildings, or rainfall pulses, then we
> have specific and
> measurable objectives that we can create and monitor, and
> very specific
> places where such a strategy wil work well. But, setting a
> goal of 40% cover
> is meaningless. Do we want 40% uniformly in the region?
> (unlikely to be
> possible). Is that 40%  at maturity? In perpetuity
> (whatever that might mean
> in a tree context).
> 
> How do we know the amount required for a community ?  Is
> the AF work
> scalable between all comunity sizes?  Setting these
> numerical targets in the
> absence of better knowledge and justification is really
> setting us up for
> continued failure because they are virtually imposible to
> accomplish now or
> in the future.
> 
> Far better to design, implement and enforce (good luck)
> design policies
> requiring all new developments to plant trees, or
> engineering departments to
> allow more space for trees in road infrastructure etc. But
> that requirs more
> land , and more land may be in conflict with compact
> community design
> principles, densification, infill, or in places like metrro
> Vancouver, the
> requirment for preload materials and new geodetic
> elevations that anticipate
> sea level rise etc. So then we end up using structural
> soils and tree vaults
> in very restricted spaces which also means smaller trees at
> maturity which
> extrapolates to less canopy cover.
> 
> And we think there are problems in Canada! I am in Hong
> Kong right now where
> restricted growing space as an issue gets redefined.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Julian A. Dunster R.P.F., M.C.I.P., ISA Certified
> Arborist, ASCA
> Registered Consulting Arborist, PNWISA Certified Tree Risk
> Assessor #1.
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:01:52 -0400
> From: "Andy Kenney" <a.kenney at utoronto.ca>
> Subject: [CANUFNET] Canopy Cover
> To: "'Canadian Urban Forest Network'"
> <canufnet at list.web.net>
> Message-ID:
> <000e01c9a89b$41e89a90$c5b9cfb0$@kenney at utoronto.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Hello CANUFNET,
> 
>  
> 
> I agree with Peter that the first step towards managing
> canopy cover is to
> do some inventory work. There are many ways to go about
> this, and our
> experience of late developing a canopy cover estimate for
> the City of
> Thunder Bay might be of interest to all those concerned
> with urban canopy
> cover inventory work.
> 
>  
> 
> 1 - Imagery type and resolution: from satellite imagery to
> aerial
> photography there are plenty of options. 
> 
>  
> 
> We found current year high res (i.e 50-80 c pixels) colour
> digital aerial
> imagery acquired at a time of year when deciduous trees
> have leaves the best
> for delineating the extent of individual tree canopies.
> Coupled with high
> res imagery Cities typically have on hand collected
> "leaf off" to view grey
> infrastructure to interpret any problem areas we were
> confident that urban
> canopy cover exists where our interpreters looked to
> classify points.  
> 
>  
> 
> 2- Continuous versus point sample approaches to
> classification of ground
> cover types. 
> 
>  
> 
> Continuous classification requires very high resolution
> images and lots of
> $$. Does it provide better information remains a question.
> The key to
> providing good estimates using point sampling is to have
> access to good GIS
> data in order to provide stratification options that others
> in this chat
> have alluded to - i.e. residential vs. commercial and
> industrial land use
> types; Wards; Neighborhoods, etc.  Once strata of interest
> are selected, one
> can measure precision of the estimates statistically and
> ensure estimates
> fall within acceptable margins of error.
> 
>  
> 
> KBM can provide support for any of these approaches. We led
> all of the study
> design, and flew our own aircraft and digital camera set-up
> for Thunder Bay;
> and did all image processing and interpretation in house. I
> don't know of
> any other Ontario forestry consulting service providers
> that have/can do
> this. Most similar Ontario projects to date have relied
> heavily on support
> from the US forest Service.
> 
>  
> 
> I invite anyone interested to contact me directly using the
> coordinates
> listed in my e-signature below. Also, Thunder Bay City
> Forester Shelley
> Vescio is open to discussing the Thunder Bay project. In
> fact, she and City
> Planner Chris Doyle will be presenting the project
> methodologies and
> outcomes at an upcoming ESRI user conference in Thunder Bay
> April 28-29
> 2009:
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> ESRI Regional User Conference - Thunder Bay 
> 
> Date : Apr 28, 09 ~ Apr 29, 09 
> Venue : Valhalla Inn
> Venue Address : 1 Valhalla Inn Road, Thunder Bay, ON P7E
> 6J1
> Venue Telephone: 807-577-1121
> Location : Thunder Bay, ON
> Event Language : English
> 
> 
> ESRI Regional User Conference - Thunder Bay
> ESRI Canada is pleased to invite you to join other GIS
> professionals for
> this exclusive opportunity to learn about the latest
> advances in GIS
> technology and hear first hand how others in your community
> are using a
> geographic approach in their work.
> 
> The main conference (plenary sessions, user presentations
> and technical
> sessions) will be held on Wednesday, April 29, 2009.
> 
> Enhance your conference experience with a pre-conference
> workshop. Workshops
> will be held on Tuesday, April 28, 2009.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Ben Kuttner, M.Sc.F., R.P.F.
> 
> Consulting Forester
> 
> General Manager - Toronto
> 
> KBM Forestry Consultants Inc.
> 
>  <http://www.kbm.on.ca/> www.kbm.on.ca
> 
>  <mailto:kuttner at kbm.on.ca> kuttner at kbm.on.ca
> 
> mobile: 647-273-4576
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
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> End of CANUFNET Digest, Vol 52, Issue 12
> ****************************************