1. i-Tree for Professional Arborists
Eric Kuehler – Technology Transfer Specialist
USDA Forest Service – Southern Center for Urban Forestry Research and Information
International Society of Arboriculture Southern Chapter Annual Meeting
March 24-27, 2007
In 2006, i-Tree was introduced at the ISA Annual Conference in Minneapolis. This presentation is intended to show how professionals can use these software applications to advocate for urban natural resources and help increase their profits.

2. i-Tree was developed for commercial arborists, environmental consultants, municipal foresters, planners, non-profit tree advocates, and anyone else with a vested interest in their community’s urban forest.
Urban Forestry Project Profile
i-Tree: Urban Forest Inventory and Analysis
USDA Forest Service – Urban and Community Forestry (May 2004)
i-Tree was developed for professionals in the tree care industry and non-professionals alike.

3. i-Tree may be a good tool for you
If you are a professional who:
Conducts tree inventories
Writes management plans
Has used CityGreen for analyses
Contract municipal arborist
Provides consulting services
Tree risk assessments/Hazard tree analyses
Specialized tree planting plans
Training/organizing city staff and volunteers
i-Tree is another tool for your tool box to open doors for business, build relationships, and increase profits

4. What is i-Tree?
A Suite of USDA Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Analysis and Benefits Assessment Software
Designed to help communities promote sound urban forest management
Provides the tools to demonstrate the economic and ecological benefits of trees in cities
Hopefully this will convince city officials to invest in urban tree maintenance and urban forest management
Communities that invest in their urban forest generally turn to professionals for guidance and contract larger jobs to local arborists.

5. i-Tree Suite Diverse Partnership
U. S. Forest Service
Research
Developed models
Davey Resource Group
Providing technical support
National Arbor Day Foundation
Society of Municipal Arborists
Project promotion
Several years ago, the Forest Service had a vision to put all of these projects together in one package and make them available to people who could use and benefit from them. A partnership was formed to help the Forest Service manage, promote, and disseminate these applications.

6. STRATUM UFORE SDAP MCTI
Street Tree Resource Assessment Tool for Urban-forest Managers
UFORE
Urban Forest Effects Model
SDAP
Storm Damage Assessment Protocol
MCTI
Mobile Community Tree Inventory
These are the four software applications and I will review each individually.

7. STRATUM
What is it?
Computer-based tool that enables communities to assess its street tree resources
Quantifies benefits (economic/ecological) of street trees on annual basis
Energy conservation
Air quality values / amount of pollution removed
CO2 sequestration and storage values
Stormwater control
Aesthetic value
STRATUM is probably the most popular. The dollar values that this program gives is an estimate and is designed to give a starting point for municipalities to see how valuable their street trees are.

8. STRATUM How to use it Using the i-Tree inventory PDA utility
Enter up to 17 fields of information for each tree
Zone
Public/Private trees
Species and diameter
Tree condition
Land use and location site
Maintenance recommendation and priority task
Infrastructure conflicts
Additional fields for other information
STRATUM is designed to be used on a PDA

9. STRATUM What information will it give you?
Resource structural analysis of street tree population
Population summary
Species and size distribution
Structural condition
Maintenance recommendations and tasks
Infrastructure conflicts
Stocking levels
Importance values
Relative performance index
Replacement values (CTLA, 9th edition)
User defined information
As with other inventory software applications, you are given the basic resource structural analysis.

10. STRATUM What information will it give you?
Benefit – Cost analysis reports
Annual benefits
Energy
Stormwater
Air quality – O3, NOx, SOx, VOCs, BVOCs, PM10
Carbon dioxide
Aesthetic value - property value
Management costs
Net annual benefits
The benefit-cost analysis is something unique to STRATUM

11. www.urbanforestrysouth.org www.itreetools.org
These are examples of some of the graphical reports generated by STRATUM to help visualize concepts of the analysis

12. www.urbanforestrysouth.org www.itreetools.org
STRATUM can also generate detailed reports broken down by species

13. www.urbanforestrysouth.org www.itreetools.org
The benefit-cost analysis is unique to STRATUM. This example is from Davis, CA

14. STRATUM Advantages Disadvantages Easy to collect data
Employees can be easily trained
Puts dollar values on trees
Ballpark figures
Provides good data for planning
Sample inventory saves time
Can analyze existing inventories
Field parameters easily changed
Snapshot in time (one time use)
Not an UF projection tool
Not GIS compatible
Not a management tool
No tree location component

15. STRATUM may be a good tool for you If you are a professional who:
Conducts tree inventories
Writes management plans
Has used CityGreen for analyses
Contract municipal arborist
Provides consulting services
Tree risk assessments/Hazard tree analyses
Specialized tree planting plans
Training/organizing city staff and volunteers

16. UFORE What is it? A model to assess the entire urban forest
Public and private properties
Parks, undeveloped lands, neighborhoods, etc.
Trees, shrubs, ground cover
Calculates urban forest structure
Estimates environmental services that the urban forest provides
Predicts environmental and economic benefits
UFORE looks at every aspect of the urban forest

17. UFORE
When to use it
When more accurate forest structure, economic, and ecological benefits are desired for the entire urban forest (not just street trees)
To establish long-term management plans
To develop restoration goals
Because the UFORE model and data collection protocol are so detailed, this application may be more suited for those communities that are ready to take a deeper look into their natural resources. This model may be too involved for a community that is just getting started with their UF program.

18. How to Use it Establish random plots around community
Set up 1/10th acre plots and inventory
trees, shrubs, ground cover, etc.

19. UFORE What information will it give you?
Estimates of entire urban forest structure
Amount of pollution removed by urban forest
Percent air quality improvement annually
Total carbon stored and net carbon sequestered
Energy and air quality benefits ($) of UF
Potential impact of pests on urban forest
UFORE gives the same info that STRATUM gives, but in greater detail because detailed crown info and distance and direction of trees to buildings is recorded.

20. UFORE Advantages Disadvantages Gives details on entire UF
Provides more accurate value of the urban forest than STRATUM
Very thorough data collection
Allows for sample inventory
Data collection can be detailed
Data must be sent off for analysis
2-6 week turnaround time
Requires much time and effort
Requires property owners’ permission to access plots
Many plots required for accuracy

21. UFORE may be a good tool for you If you are a professional who:
Conducts tree inventories
Writes management plans
Has used CityGreen for analyses
Contract municipal arborist
Provides consulting services
Tree risk assessments/Hazard tree analyses
Specialized tree planting plans
Training/organizing city staff and volunteers

22. SDAP
What is it?
A method to estimate potential (pre-storm) and actual amount of tree debris generated after a natural disaster and the clean-up cost associated with it
This tool can help municipalities prepare for a natural disaster before an event and obtain the necessary funding to clean up after the event.

23. SDAP
When to use it
To help municipalities generate an Emergency Operation Plan and a Debris Management Plan before a storm
To provide approximate clean-up costs to city, state, and/or federal agencies after a storm event

24. SDAP What information will it give you?
Pre-storm estimate of tree debris clean-up costs city-wide for planning purposes
Post-storm estimate of mitigation and clean-up costs to present to FEMA or other assistance agency

25. SDAP Advantages Disadvantages
Provides estimates for storm debris clean-up costs for planning purposes before a storm
Provides ballpark cost estimates for storm clean-up for FEMA after a storm
Allows for sample inventory (as little as 2% of the street segments)
Trained damage assessor(s) are needed to generate reliable data
Post-storm safety concerns
Less reliable results with tornados, floods, and other wind- related disasters because of C&D debris
C&D debris = construction and demolition

26. SDAP may be a good tool for you If you are a professional who:
Conducts tree inventories
Writes management plans
Has used CityGreen for analyses
Contract municipal arborist
Provides consulting services
Tree risk assessments/Hazard tree analyses
Specialized tree planting plans
Training/organizing city staff and volunteers

27. MCTI What is it? Basic street tree inventory application
Urban forest management tool
Communities can track
Location
Species and age class distribution
Pruning needs
Tree health
Hazard tree identification

28. MCTI What information will it give you?
Forest structure (i.e. species and size composition)
Analyze condition of individual trees or all public trees
Reveal planting needs and location
ID budget needs and set priorities for maintenance
Can gain information about individual or groups of trees (i.e. historic trees, hazard trees, etc.). Can follow the condition of one tree over time or the condition of the entire UF.

29. MCTI may be a good tool for you If you are a professional who:
Conducts tree inventories
Writes management plans
Has used CityGreen for analyses
Contract municipal arborist
Provides consulting services
Tree risk assessments/Hazard tree analyses
Specialized tree planting plans
Training/organizing city staff and volunteers

30. i-Tree goals
To enable communities of any size to determine benefits, costs, and management needs of their urban forest
Assist communities develop a sound, reasonable, and achievable urban forest management plan
What this means for the professional arborist or consultant is greater potential for work in those communities.

31. i-Tree Advantages Disadvantages Price is right
Potential to increase business
Puts $ value on urban forest
Gives basis for management plan
User’s manual provides details on how to use software and reports
Some applications require steep learning curve
Takes some time to become comfortable with these applications
It’s still evolving (it’s not perfect, but it’s a good start)
It’s not GIS compatible

32. Modifications and Case Study
Currently, i-Tree PDA utilities are only compatible with Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile 2002, 2003, and 5.0 operating systems.
We wanted to develop
GIS capability in data collection
General use on non-supported equipment

33. STRATUM modifications
Get data to MS Excel format
Juniper Systems Allegro CX field PC
Created data dictionary (Trimble Technology)
STRATUM field headings
Additional fields for address and comments
We knew that if we could get the data into an Excel spreadsheet, we could get STRATUM to read it. We used equipment that we had on hand and modified it to collect data to be run in STRATUM.

34. STRATUM does not recognize these fields www.urbanforestrysouth.org
Data were downloaded into Trimble’s GPS Pathfinder Office Software then exported to a format that could be read by MS Excel. The added fields were excluded before being read by STRATUM.

35. GIS Layers Created All trees in poor condition All trees by size class
GIS layers and maps were incorporated into the final report for the test communities.
All trees in poor condition
All trees by size class

36. How to get i-Tree www.itreetools.org
Select “Get the i-Tree Tools Installation CD-ROM”
CD will be mailed to you

37. Questions Eric Kuehler 706-559-4268 ekuehler@fs.fed.us