Since 1992 we have provided our customers with reliable scientific evidence that the benefits of urban forests add real value to communities.
Our research confirms that trees in our community forests are assets that pay us back.
Trees:
- Conserve energy by shading buildings and paved surfaces
- Filter airborne pollutants
- Remove atmospheric carbon dioxide
- Reduce stormwater runoff
- Increase the value of our homes
New research
The CUFR Tree Carbon Calculator (CTCC) for California climate regions is now available. It's free, easy to use, and available to everyone -- from individuals curious about the amount of carbon stored in their front yard trees to municipalities, utilities, universities and other entities that are quantifying effects of greenhouse gas tree planting and stewardship projects.
The CTCC produces carbon storage and sequestration values for a tree (based on age or diameter-at-breast height) plus the associated energy conservation and emission reductions. To learn more or download this Excel application, visit the U.S. Forest Service's Climate Change Resource Center website.
A help menu and list of frequently asked questions are included online with the CTCC. Additional technical assistance is available via email at psw_cufr@fs.fed.us.
Urban Forest Project Reporting Protocol - At the beginning of June, we brought nearly two years of work to an end and delivered our draft of the Urban Forest Project Protocol to the California Climate Action Registry. We're thrilled to announce that our work has borne fruit. After more than 18 months of work, eleven drafts, countless meetings, and extremely helpful feedback from our stakeholder groups, the California Climate Action Registry's Board of Directors approved the Protocol on August 12. You can find the final version here. Let the projects begin!!
For more information on the Urban Forest Protocol and urban trees and global climate change in general, see our Protocol webpage.
Structural soils - Results of the second phase of Dr. Qingfu Xiao’s study to determine the ability of three engineered soils to capture pollutants and store rainwater are now available. You can download the final report here. Dr. Xiao, our hydrologist from UC Davis, is collaborating with scientists at Cornell University and Virginia Tech to study the impacts of different kinds of engineered soils on stormwater runoff. In the first stage of the project, Dr. Xiao compared his engineered soil ("UC Davis soil") with two other soils—Cornell soil and Carolina Stalite—in laboratory tests. You can read the results of those tests here and read more about the first installation, in a parking lot on UC Davis's campus, in our one-page summary. one-page summary.
Million Trees LA - The Pacific Southwest Research Station is pleased to be able to provide a simple tree selection tool to assist the City of Los Angeles in meeting their goal to plant a million trees. See how to pick a one-in-a-million tree!
To learn more, visit the Million Trees LA website or read our project profile. [PDF 1.9 MB]
The Los Angeles One Million Tree Canopy Cover Analysis is complete! Click here for a low resolution version [PDF 1.7 MB] or click here to download the high resolution version [PDF 4.7 MB].
Urban Forest Research News Briefs
Stay on top of our latest research. Sign up today!
Read current and past issues
Upcoming Speeches
February 17, 2009
The Urban Forest Imperative: Effects on Carbon, Water, Heat Islands and Community Quality of Life
Speaker: Greg McPherson
Where: Urban Greenscapes Symposium 2009
Canberra, Australia
February 18, 2009
New Tools for Urban Greening
Speaker: Greg McPherson
Where: 2009 Nursery Industry National Conference
Canberra, Australia
Missed our talks? You can still see the presentations-- View speeches.
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 Keep up with what's new at CUFR! Add our RSS feed and you'll stay on top of the latest without having to check back. How does it work? First, you need an RSS reader. Google, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and the latest version of Microsoft Outlook offer them so you can check out CUFR news in the same place you check your email. Or you can add an RSS feed right to your internet browser with Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, or Safari. Once you've selected your reader, just cut and paste this link into the "Add Subscription" or "Add New Feed" box: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/rss/cufr_rss.xml. Our latest headlines will appear automatically!
The newest entry in our Community Tree Guide series, the Tropical Community Tree Guide: Benefits, Costs, and Strategic Planting, is now available. The Tropical Climate Zone was also added to the latest release of STRATUM, extending the program's applicability to include communities in Southern Florida and Hawaii.
Winter 2008 News Brief: Catch up with our latest research quickly by reading our fall News Brief! [PDF 103 kB] If you'd like to receive future News Briefs, sign up here.
The Air Resources Board adopted the Urban Forest Project Reporting Protocol to quantify emissions from urban forest projects. Read more about it here.
Our study on locating potential planting sites in Los Angeles using aerial imagery and GIS has just been published in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening. Congratulations Chelsea!
Looking for ways personally to make a difference in the fight against global climate change? Read Kelaine's article in the Spring issue of California Trees for more information on how trees help and what you can do. "Trees have one big advantage compared to all other methods of addressing global warming: they actually remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere."
Treeconomics! In the latest issue of Landscape Architecture magazine, Greg McPherson talks about the value of trees in cities while sharing a little of his own philosophy. "Each tree that is properly planted and survives over the long term creates a little speck of habitat for people in cities."
Animating trees: Most tree growth animations and, in fact, most trees in any graphics program, are not based on real data. Our new program, developed with scientists at the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science at Greifswald University in Germany, models tree growth on-the-fly based on measurements from CUFR research and displays the benefits and costs of the trees at the same time. Watch a quick clip of our first tree animation video on youtube.com or see the latest version below. In the coming weeks, we'll be featuring animations of different species on our website. For information on the research that went into constructing the model, read Visualization of Time-Varying Tree Data [PDF 1 MB] and Inverse Modeling and Animation of Growing Single-Stemmed Trees at Interactive Rates [PDF 180 kB].
See what else was new at the Center in our Archive...
Elm Trials - In the 1930s, Dutch elm disease began ravaging America's urban forests, and by the 1970s almost all of our elm trees were dead. Now scientists across the country are testing newly developed elm varieties in an attempt to bring them back. Visit the National Elm Trial website to learn more and read about the 17 cultivars the Center for Urban Forest Research is testing here at UC Davis in our project profile [PDF 1.9 MB].
Oakland Watershed Restoration and Protection Study - To learn more, read our project profile. [PDF 101 kB]
Sacramento Urban Forest For Clean Air Project - Recently, the EPA has begun to consider new, innovative measures to fight air pollution and trees are being considered as one of the solutions. To read more about the potential role of trees in State Implementation Plans for the Clean Air Act, read our project summary [PDF 1.8 MB]. Read more about the Urban Forests for Clean Air Project in the Sacramento Bee. [PDF 29kB]
Models
STRATUM - an application within the new i-Tree software suite, is an easy to use, computer-based program that helps communities assess the benefits of their street trees.
ecoSmart - a Web-based program designed to evaluate the economic trade-offs between different landscape practices on residential parcels.
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