For more than 30 years, Arbor Age magazine has been covering new and innovative products, services, technology and research vital to tree care companies, municipal arborists and utility right-of-way maintenance companies
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www.arborage.com Arbor Age / April 2014 11 I n 1844, an Italian-born engineer working in France, Jules Du- puit, began to concern himself with an economic question. Working on a toll bridge project, Dupuit pondered what the ideal price for the toll should be. If the toll was too high, trav- elers would actively avoid the bridge they had built; too low and his company would be leaving money on the table and struggle to recoup their investment expenses. He realized there must be an optimal price where the consumption (crossing the bridge, in this case) was at a perfect equilibrium with what they paid to build the bridge and what consumers would pay. Though he likely didn't realize it at the time, Dupuit had set the groundwork for one of the most important economic concepts of the modern world: cost/ benefi t analysis. While it can be described in as complex a function as you like, modern fi nance views it one way: projects that cost little to implement but reap a tremendous return on investment are the projects worth investing in. In tree care, we do this analysis all the time. We weigh the price of a new bucket truck with how many more jobs we can complete with it. We weigh the cost of hiring an additional sales arborist with the potential revenue they can bring in. We also make value propositions to tree owners in tree healthcare, such as "protect- ing your tree for this issue would cost 'x', while removing your tree would cost 'y'." We also consider aesthetic and environmental cost/benefi ts of treatments and non-treatments as well. That said, I would submit that there is one service that we can provide trees whose cost is insignifi cant when weighed against the value it pro- vides: mulch. Think of mulch as that low-budget indie fi lm that grosses gazillions of dollars, wins tons of awards, and makes all the studio execs happy. Roughly defi ned, mulch is any layer of material applied to the surface area of soil. We most commonly associate mulch as an organic material, such as wood chips, shredded bark, leaves or even grass clippings. Mulch can also be inorganic material such as rock, shredded rubber, fabric or plastic sheeting. In urban From top: Most trees spent their time adapting to forest habitats in rich soils where years of fallen leaves and woody debris cover the surface; The maintenance of grass by means of mowers and string trimmers is one of the most frequent ways the bases of trees are damaged; Mulch makes mowing around trees easier; Mulch research plots. B y B r a n d o n G a l l a g h e r W a t s o n Think of mulch as that low-budget indie ð lm that grosses gazillions of dollars, wins tons of awards, and makes all the studio execs happy.