Trees Have Monetary Value

Some people have always known that trees have value, but now a dollar value has been put on them.

Now, for the first time, the [New York City] Parks Department can actually translate the value of the city’s trees into real dollars and cents. And as expected, it’s a big number.

Step 1 was a tree census, a two-year process that sent more than 1,000 volunteers to count every tree on every street in the [New York] city. The census results were then fed into a computer program that spit out a dollar value for each of the 592,130 trees counted, a figure that does not include the roughly 4.5 million trees in parks and on private land.

The program, called Stratum, was developed by researchers at the University of California at Davis and the United States Forest Service. It takes into account several factors, including a tree’s impact on local property values, its contribution to cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, and how much its shade helps reduce energy consumption.

Factoring in the costs associated with planting and upkeep, New York City’s street trees provide an annual benefit of about $122 million, according to the Parks Department. The study concludes that New York receives $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on trees.

Considering the enhanced root system of EMI trees absorbs 18x more carbon dioxide than other trees, I'd like to see their benefit / cost ratio.

EMI Sycamore Trees Ready for Planting

Amazon Versus Chevron

Approximately 30,000 Amazonian Indians and settlers are suing Chevron Corp. for failing to clean up billions of gallons of wastewater in Ecuador. Texaco Petroleum Co., which merged with Chevron in 2001, spent 30 years drilling for oil and dumping more than 18 billion gallons of oily wastewater in the rainforest.

The Indians are claiming that the oil company caused 30 times more damage than the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for the lands are now too oily to cultivate and cancer rates are elevated. They claim that when Texaco ceased drilling operations, their cleanup consisted of simply dumping dirt over contaminated soil and ponds. Chevron's lawyers claim that all cleanup efforts complied with Ecuadorean environmental laws.

The case is currently being heard in an Ecuadorean court after 10 years of failure to get Big Oil in a US court. Chevron has flat refused to settle out of court and a decision is not expected before next year.

Longleaf Pine Restoration

The US Army Corps of Engineers at Allatoona Lake has revived a natural ecosystem that was once native to the land surrounding the lake. Due to farming on the land prior to creation of the lake, the Longleaf pine ecosystem was transformed to a forest of more aggressive Loblolly and Virginia pines. Longleaf pine offers more benefits to wildlife and, in fact, offers such diversity that it serves as host to unique communities of plants and wildlife. Corps of Engineers personnel removed the competing pines and recreated the natural ecosystem through replanting and emulating wildfire. This undertaking took place on approximately 60 acres of the Allatoona Wildlife Management Area in Cherokee County near the border of Bartow County and has been so successful that the restoration will be expanded to almost 350 acres.


While this project is great for Allatoona Lake, it will hardly make a dent in the millions of acres of longleaf pine ecosystem that have been lost in the last 50 years. Many other parks and refuges are also planning longleaf pine restorations.

Earth Day 2007

Happy Earth Day!

Did you do anything green today?

Fly Green

Delta Airlines joins the numerous companies that are going green. Delta's Force for Global Good program allows customers to add a donation to any ticket purchase that will fund tree planting projects in managed forests around the world to offset carbon emissions. 100 percent of donations will be disbursed to the Conservation Fund's Carbon Sequestration Program. To date, the Conservation Fund has restored 30,000 acres with 9 million trees.

Shrinking Ice, Shrinking Hunting Grounds

Native villagers in northern Canada and the Arctic are receiving visitors they've never seen before. Warmer temperatures and warmer waters have sent animals such as finches, robins and dolphins into places where they have no name. This warmer atmosphere has also meant ice freezes later and thinner, forcing villagers to travel further to hunting grounds they once accessed by ice.

Hunting has also become more dangerous. Less snow has made it difficult to build igloos for shelter and thinning ice has claimed the lives of seasoned hunters. Knowledge that has been passed down for thousands of years about how to survive in these harsh conditions is no longer functional. Many elders refuse to even go out on the ice.

While Americans are responsible for one-fourth of the emissions that scientists attribute to global warming, these simple people who lived off the land for generations are feeling the affects. Everyone needs to do their part to reverse the effects of global warming.

Wind Power

Durango, Colorado city government has signed a contract to convert from 10% to 100% wind-generated power. Supplying energy from wind turbines will come at a yearly additional cost, which should be offset by energy efficiency credits and customers' agreement to pay an additional $1.25 per 100 kilowatt-hours per month.

Valley Park Restoration

Valley Park, Missouri

This narrow, high velocity stream was experiencing severe erosion. Portions of the bank were lined with riprap for protection.

Other portions of the bank were lined with sandbags filled with air-pruned grasses interspersed with air-pruned trees. The sandbags hold soils in place long enough for the grass and tree root systems to become established. Then, air-pruned root systems hold soils in place and the grasses and trees provide roughness which dissipate energy.

Bank roughness from grasses and trees dissipates energy, which slows velocities and allows sediments to drop out of flow building banks instead of eroding them.

Lights Out for Change

Saturday night was the night that the lights went out in Sydney. At 7:30, homes, businesses and even famous skyline landmarks like the Sydney Opera House went dark for one hour to raise awareness about global warming and the steps that can be taken to help. Australia, with it's 21 million residents, is ranked the world's number 1 greenhouse gas emitter per capita.

Earth Hour was organized by environmentalists as the kick off to a campaign asking Sydney residents to turn off lights, computers and other electrical equipment when not in use which could reduce gas emissions by 5% a year. Scientists estimate that, without change, temperatures in Australia could rise 6.7 degrees by the year 2080, bringing more of the catastrophic weather conditions that have plagued the world in the last decades.

Sydney is not the first city to put the lights out for change. Paris, Rome and Athens have held similar conservation initiatives.