LITA Model: Linear Index of Tree Appraisal of Large Urban Swedish Trees

Summary: The LITA model, a linear index of tree appraisal, links large urban tree replacement costs to price, cross-sectional area, damage, planting and base cost.

Silver birch (Betula pendula) is one of the tree species in the LITA model study conducted by Johan Östberg and Johan Sjögren; Betula pendula at Stockholm University, Stockholm, southern Sweden; July 1, 2005: Jordgubbe, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The LITA model, a linear index of tree appraisal, associates urban tree economic values with replacement costs per cross-sectional areas, according to an article in Arboriculture & Urban Forestry for January 2016.

Johan Östberg and Johan Sjögren base The Linear Index of Tree Appraisal (LITA) Model for Economic Valuation of Large Urban Trees in Sweden upon six nurseries. Replacement correlates cross-section-customized base prices at Germany-based Bruns Pflanzen, Lappen and Lorenz von Ehren and Sweden-based Billbäcks, Splendor Plant and Stångby nurseries with damage-, vitality-compromised assessments.

Current models defer less to ecosystem contribution and willingness-to-pay methods than to the implementable formula method that derives replacement costs from adjustment factors and base costs. Aesthetics, age, amenity, beetle and borer predation, construction damage, placement, size of cross-sectional area, stem circumference or tree volume and vitality ease or expand base values.

Models furnish different maximums, slopes and timing for age-decreased values whereas CAVAT, CTLA, Helliwell, Koch, revised Burnley, STEM and VAT03 methods feature damage- and vitality-reduced values.

The co-authors give as study aims generating a model whose assessability, understandability and workability go with the Swedish legal system, whose courts grasp aesthetic values contradictorily. The LITA model, as linear index of tree appraisal, has as its purpose harvesting same-condition, location, size, species adjustment factors and base prices from known prices. Its goals, through price, adjustment and planting-cost model investigations, identify same-size, same-species urban amenity tree market prices, implement lowest base values and instruct courts and users.

LITA model species join commonly urban-planted linden lime (Tilia x europaea), Norway maple (Acer platanoides) and silver birch (Betula pendula) with pricey English oak (Quercus robur).

The LITA model keeps cross-sectional areas at 1-meter (3.28-foot) heights in square centimeters and five-year planting costs to aeration, irrigation, maintenance, removal, replacement, restoration and tethering. It looks at final cost as lowest nursery price per square centimeter of European nursery standard size 12-14, as primary parameter and as single data point. It makes base costs calculations for trees "without damage and without loss of vitality, since this is the state in which trees are bought from nurseries." It notes Koch method-netted 25, 35, 50, 70, 90 and 100 percent reductions for 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50-plus percent crown, root, stem damages.

The LITA model, as linear index of tree appraisal, omits age because of lifespan variations within species and soft aesthetic, architectonic, recreational values because of subjectivity.

Planting costs price "almost limitless" lists of "special conditions," such as asphalt or concrete pavement, maintenance, planting bed size, population totals and site construction and transportation. The LITA model qualifies as a compromise between reasonability and specificity by quantifying "very similar" park (R2=0.8096) and street (R2=0.8037) planting costs into a combined mean. It reveals Vr (replacement cost) = Pt (catalog price) x A (cross-sectional area) x D (damage) + A x Pp (planting cost) + B (base cost).

The linear index of tree appraisal model shows economic replacement costs, not greater values of "history or architectural features that the lost tree might have had." Its common urban environment-triggered approach tenses up around expensive, specialist planting equipment, historically and structurally significant trees and nursery trees sized above and below standard 12-14.

Of the tree species studied under the LITA model by Johan Östberg and Johan Sjögren, the common linden (Tilia x europaea) is most commonly found in Sweden; Tilia x europaea at Svartsjö Castle, Ekerö kommun (Ekerö municipality), Uppland province, east central Sweden; June 2008: Udo Schröter, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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:

Silver birch (Betula pendula) is one of the tree species in the LITA model study conducted by Johan Östberg and Johan Sjögren; Betula pendula at Stockholm University, Stockholm, southern Sweden; July 1, 2005: Jordgubbe, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Betula_Pendula_at_Stockholm_University_2005-07-01.jpg

Of the tree species studied under the LITA model by Johan Östberg and Johan Sjögren, the common linden (Tilia x europaea) is most commonly found in Sweden; Tilia x europaea at Svartsjö Castle, Ekerö kommun (Ekerö municipality), Uppland province, east central Sweden; June 2008: Udo Schröter, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kristinas_lind_2013.jpg

For further information:

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

Hayes, Ed. 2001. Evaluating Tree Defects. Revised, Special Edition. Rochester MN: Safe Trees.

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