City Trees

What are some of the technologies you are employing? SA: All our team members are heavy users of mobile technology and GIS. We all use tablets to capture and manage service requests from the public and to manage information about site/work history and about trees and natural resources. We also use several i-Tree tools quite a bit to help quantify and communicate things like tree canopy cover and tree benefits/ecosystem services. We love to plant bare root trees when they are available and the weather/timing is right, because they are so much easier to transport and plant and because the root systems are a known quantity. We haven't used structural soils, but we often use suspended pavement systems with expanded volumes of un-compacted soil, using a combination of proprietary products and some homegrown alternatives to reduce costs. Also, we're big fans of sidewalk hinging technologies (engineered joints that link panels together to prevent offset); often these are used in conjunction with judicious root pruning/shaving and creative concrete design. How do you acquire your plant material? SA: We do not grow our own trees (but we'd love to if we had the resources). However, our agency does have a native plant nursery, where we grow out hard-to-find native plant species. We are currently growing out sev- eral hundred giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) there for use in a special project called 2,021 for 2021. This climate change awareness project will involve planting 2021 giant sequoias–in appropriate spots—around town in advance of the 2021 World Track and Field Championships that we'll be hosting at the University of Oregon. In general, we buy most of our trees from a local bro- ker who has strong relationships with various nurseries throughout the state and region. We have not entered into formal contracts with nurseries to grow our trees, but we do our best to proactively communicate with growers about what we hope to plant in the future. While we try to support our local nurseries as much as pos- sible, we've often had to turn to out-of-state sources for our trees. This is unfortunate and unsustainable, especially considering that Oregon is one of the biggest producers/ exporters of shade trees in the nation. We're trying to remedy this situation by building stronger working relation- ships with local nurseries. The economic downturn of 2009 really put a damper on the supply of trees throughout the country, but things seem slowly to be getting better. >> 35

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