City Trees

March/April 2013

City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!

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Municipal Arborist Exchange: A Brazilian in Northern California by Flavio Pereira Telles Photos by Flavio Pereira Telles except where indicated Flavio Pereira Telles is the Director of the Parks and Garden Foundation of the City of Rio de Janeiro. The foundation is responsible for the administration, project planning and design, forestation, and conservation of over 2000 public plazas and squares, urban and natural parks, and streetscapes. This is the second of two articles detailing the 2011 Municipal Arborist Exchange between the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sacramento, California. After a long flight to California from Rio, my colleague and exchange partner, Joe Benassini, met me at the San Francisco airport for a week of exploring urban forestry in the City of Sacramento and the City of San Francisco. My first full day in Sacramento began with an early start and a quick tour of City Hall. Joe introduced me to Jerry Way, Director of the Transportation Department, under which the Urban Forestry division operates. Jerry and Joe walked me through the various sections of the Sacramento City Council Member Steve Cohn (left) presented Flavio with a proclamation welcoming him to the city and congratulating Flavio and Joe on their arborist exchange. Photo by Jerry Way department and provided introductions to coworkers in the Street Maintenance, Traffic Engineering, Survey, Development Engineering, Finance and Planning, and Traffic Operations Center, all of which have a stake in the City's urban forest. I then met with several professionals who administer Urban Forestry's GIS and inventory database, which includes all street and park trees for the City. Sacramento conducted an inventory in 2009 and 2010 and catalogued over 100,000 trees for which the division is responsible. The system is one layer of many available on the City's intranet, so it is accessible to others in the City such as engineers, architects, and planners. After lunch I visited the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) headquarters and met with Steve Hallmark, who is Superintendent of Vegetation Management and responsible for control of vegetation under SMUD's large electrical transmission and distribution network. As in Brazil, utility arboriculture is an important and growing industry as the demand for energy increases. SMUD is owned by ratepayers, A visit to container nursery, Boething Treeland Farms, in Lodi, California 32 The "Spire" is constructed of the trunks of Monterey Cypress trees (Cupressus macrocarpa) that have been removed from San Francisco's Presidio Forest. City Trees

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