Urban Forest Maintenance and Non-Maintenance Costs and Benefits

Summary: Urban forest maintenance asks "How long?" "How much?" "How often?" "What?" "Which?" and "Who?" in ascertaining cost-benefit analyses of urban trees.

Water is essential for optimal growth and health of woody plants; USDA's i-Tree Tools peer-reviewed, state-of-the-art software suite is in the public domain as rural and urban forestry analysis and benefit assessment tools; i-Tree Hydro simulates potential hydrological impacts of land cover changes: USDA Forest Service, Public Domain, via i-Tree Tools

The article The Cost of Not Maintaining the Urban Forest in Arborist News for February 2015 applies the prescription that "preventive maintenance should cost less than delaying maintenance" to urban forest maintenance. It brings together a review of 300-plus tree maintenance-related papers, of which 21 percent and 36 percent of 163 papers respectively infer and include maintenance-related costs. It considers impacts of non-maintenance upon future values since longevity and serviceability compel disease and pest management, infrastructure repair, mulching, nutrient management, planting, pruning and watering.

The article's framework elements express duration, extent, frequency and intensity of urban forest maintenance activity type (mulching, pruning, staking) by whom (citizen, nonprofit, private, professional, public).

Duration, frequency and intensity fathom "How long?" and "How often?" and "How much?" while extent, as tree care standard practice objective, facilitates "What part?" and "Which?"

Urban forest maintenance gives pre-planting priority since "What initially occurs (or does not occur) at planting can greatly affect future maintenance, survival, and longevity of trees." Life-cycle stage-pegged maintenance helps immature, semi-mature, mature and senescent trees, with benefits holding steady increases, and costs decreases, "to the point they [woody plants] become senescent." Non-maintenance invokes lower benefits and "tree populations of lower value" since immature trees imply less benefits and more expenses and semi-mature and mature trees the reverse.

Urban forest maintenance judges that, for all tree life-cycle stages, "providing for maintenance that exceed [sic] the benefits is a financially inefficient means of allocating resources."

Natural woody plant function and structure keep non-maintained trees with benefits even though non-maintenance knows indirect costs of broken branches, debris removal, pests and tree failures.

Allocating maintenance resources below optimal pest, pruning and watering levels leads to "potentially less healthy trees that may have a shorter life span or service life." The economics-modeled intersection of marginal cost and marginal return curves mentions four- to five-year optimal pruning cycles for higher appraised tree values and stronger structural conditions. Woody plants need water for optimal growth and health since "inadequate water at critical plant life stages can ultimately lead to decreased tree health and death."

Urban forest maintenance obtains lower costs for watering, than not watering, new plantings when "replacing dead (unwatered) trees was included in the total tree establishment costs."

Inspecting and treating Dutch elm disease and managing emerald ash borers by removing, replacing and treating trees with insecticides, over doing nothing, provoke higher benefit-cost ratios.

Aesthetic and economic thresholds of unacceptable loss qualify for marginal analysis of non-treatment or treatment "when the costs of doing nothing surpasses [sic] the treatment cost." Condition and benefits and maintenance frequency, intensity and type records respectively relate physiology to pollutant uptakes, shade and water absorption and maintenance strategies to tree outcomes. The i-Tree and the Tree Benefits Calculator serve as useful tools since tree maintenance costs show "whether monetary investments in the urban forest make economic sense."

Savings on urban forest maintenance costs ultimately turn into losses in tree benefits, according to co-authors Burnell C. Fischer, Richard J. Hauer and Jessica M. Vogt.

Costs and benefits of urban forest maintenance versus non-maintenance factor into deciding for management or for non-control of emerald ash borers (EAB); emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) image by David Cappeart, Michigan State University/Bugwood.org: uacescomm, CC BY-ND 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to:
talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet;
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Image credits:

Water is essential for optimal growth and health of woody plants; USDA's i-Tree Tools peer-reviewed, state-of-the-art software suite is in the public domain as rural and urban forestry analysis and benefit assessment tools; i-Tree Hydro simulates potential hydrological impacts of land cover changes: USDA Forest Service, Public Domain, via i-Tree Tools @ http://www.itreetools.org/hydro/index.php

Costs and benefits of urban forest maintenance versus non-maintenance factor into deciding for management or for non-control of emerald ash borers (EAB); emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) image by David Cappeart, Michigan State University/Bugwood.org: uacescomm, CC BY-ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/uacescomm/14522904888/

For further information:

Gilman, Ed. 2011. An Illustrated Guide to Pruning. Third Edition. Boston MA: Cengage.

Gilman, Edward F. January 2001. "Effect of Nursery Production Method, Irrigation, and Inoculation with Mycorrhizae-Forming Fungi on Establishment of Quercus virginiana." Journal of Arboriculture 27(1): 30-39.
Available @ http://joa.isa-arbor.com/articles.asp?JournalID=1&VolumeID=27&IssueID=1

Green Cities: Good Health. "Urban Forest Health Benefits." YouTube. Nov. 3, 2011.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTwbEogu2b4

Hauer, Richard J.; Jessica M. Vogt; and Burnell C. Fischer. February 2015. "The Cost of Not Maintaining the Urban Forest." Arborist News 24(1): 12-16.
Available @ http://html5.epaperflip.com/Viewer.aspx?docid=fd65520a-16ff-421e-9fb8-a42c0118f0d3#page=14

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