The Wind River Canopy Crane gave us a bird's eye view of cutting edge forest research. What kind of research is conducted in your area? What technologies are being used? How are you using this research in your community or program?
We hope that you enjoyed your visit to Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Weyerhaeuser St. Helens Tree Farm today.
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GRESHAM -- In a world of people and plants, trees stand out as solid citizens. They clean and cool the air. They slow water runoff. They make neighborhoods feel like neighborhoods.
During the past century, however, humans felled many of the trees that once greened the Portland region and soaked up its abundant rainfall. The gray result: concrete mega-projects such as Portland's $1.4 billion Big Pipe, tunneling alongside the Willamette River to control millions of gallons of storm water that run off the unforested urban landscape each year.
Yet, like a leaf starting to unfurl, tree-thinking is changing. Recognizing that they can help combat climate change, and ultimately save society billions of dollars in combination with more conventional "gray" infrastructure, jurisdictions are stepping up to save existing stands and replant trees in urban areas.
Their overarching objective: filling in the canopy of sparsely treed neighborhoods, perhaps most urgently east of the Willamette, where the deficiency of trees stands out on maps. Some researchers have dubbed that area "the big white pork chop," because of its shape and less-treed appearance.
This summer, Portland, known nationally for its well-treed image, launches "Grey to Green," a five-year, $50 million, green-up-the-city initiative that includes planting 83,000 trees -- 50,000 of them along streets, increasing the city's street-tree inventory by about one-fourth.
Suburban areas are also going green, striking out with simultaneous efforts to save trees and reduce costs:
Gresham will hire its first urban forester in 2008, hold a community tree summit Oct. 4, and launch a rewrite of its lax tree-cutting ordinance.
Leafy Lake Oswego approved its first urban forestry management plan in February, one that local leaders say will be one of the most ambitious tree-protection programs in the state.
Tigard is working to strengthen its tree code after concluding its policy of making tree-cutters pay into a fund hasn't done enough to prevent tree loss.
Clackamas County is recruiting members for a tree task force after Urban Green, a volunteer group, raised concerns in January about clear-cutting in unincorporated parts of the county. "People need to realize that when they are taking down their trees, they are taking down their oxygen," Urban Green member Catherine Blosser said.
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There's even an eco-term for the tree canopy: green infrastructure.
Nature's cleanup crew
How many trees are enough exactly? No one knows for sure.
But Portland has set a goal to increase its tree cover from 26 percent to 33 percent, propelled by a study it published last year -- now regularly cited by other jurisdictions -- describing enormous public and environmental benefits from trees.
Among other things, the Rose City's street and park trees remove nearly 2 million pounds of pollutants and nearly 53 million pounds of carbon each year, according to the study -- all without complicated engineering -- saving more than $3 million in services. Citywide, they also catch 1.3 billion gallons of storm water, according to the study, saving nearly $36 million on processing.
Steve Fancher, Gresham's watershed division manager, acknowledges those numbers are big, but he says they are completely realistic.
"It doesn't take a huge area or a very big storm to produce a million gallons of water," he said. "But if you are outside, you just don't get wet under those (big) trees."
Trees offer less-quantifiable benefits as well, Jim Labbe, urban conservationist for the Audubon Society of Portland, points out. They enhance neighborhood livability, such as on a recent Saturday when picnickers listened to the Portland Festival Symphony under Grant Park's sunlit canopy.
"People connect with trees at a visceral level," said Labbe, whose organization recently won a contract from the Metro regional government to review tree-cutting codes in the tri-county area. "The race we are in now with this work is to help people realize what they have before they've lost it."
Nick Kantor is part of that same race. In May, the AmeriCorps volunteer headed up Gresham's first partial tree census, covering two well-established neighborhoods. His team counted more than 3,500 trees -- most of them young and small -- but also discovered an unfortunate lack of parking strips where more trees could be planted, especially in Rockwood.
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"There's a lot of cement in Gresham," Kantor remarked as he and a group paced off 30-foot stretches along 194th Avenue, methodically checking the right of way for trees and spaces that could hold new trees. Eventually, Kantor's work is expected to fold into a citywide tree census and the establishment of a target goal for expanding the city's canopy.
"As we look at sustainability, we have a whole new perspective on why trees are important," said Mike Abbate, Gresham planning director. "But the first thing is to figure out what we have."
East county's needs
Even now, Friends of Trees, the Portland-based tree-planting group, aims to become more active in what program director Brighton West calls "the next frontier" east of Interstate 205. The nonprofit hasn't the same level of name-recognition in Gresham that it enjoys in Portland or even Vancouver, where it increased planting by 250 percent last year, he said. But, despite some property owners' worry that trees are difficult and expensive to care for, the need for more street and yard trees in east Multnomah County is clear, he said.
"What we need, especially east of (Interstate) 205 is for people to get excited about trees," West said, pointing out that his group counts on residents to help plant trees in their yards and parking strips, to share costs, and to care for their street trees to ensure long-term survival and maximum environmental benefits.
Meanwhile, in Portland, the city's Grey to Green initiative will fund the planting of 5,000 street and yard trees this fiscal year, some in the Brooklyn Creek basin between Mount Tabor and the Willamette River, where street and basement flooding has been a problem.
"We are relying on green infrastructure to do its part, and gray infrastructure to do the rest," said Mary Wahl, watershed services group manager.
And if the landscape begins to look greener, Lori Hennings, Metro's senior natural resource scientist, will notice. This year, with the help of advanced mapping technology, Hennings began tracking the canopy to measure gains and losses over the years. Her first map, created in May, established a baseline. The next, due in 2010, will document changes, an important milestone in the region's ability to take stock of its trees.
"There's still a lot of tree cover here," Hennings said of the map, which reveals a trove of street and backyard trees not detected by older mapping systems. But Hennings, like others, said science suggests even more is better. "If we kept the tree canopy, we wouldn't be dealing with Big Pipe," she said -- or at least not such a big pipe. "We try to do it with technology, but we can't do it as well as the trees." They all matter, she said, even those far from watersheds.
Of course, patience will be a virtue, according to Portland State University geography professor Joseph Poracsky. Spindly young trees don't provide as many environmental benefits as stately older ones. But "trees take a long time to grow, so you can't have overnight results -- you have to plan for 20 to 30 years down the line," he said. "That's when you'll start to see the difference."
Robin Franzen: 503-294-5943; robinfranzen@news.oregonian.com
