Center Receives National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council Grant

June 26, 2014

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the 2014 USDA Forest Service’s National Urban and Community Forestry Challenge grant recipients. The grants provide funding that will help enhance urban forest stewardship, support new employment opportunities, and help build resilience in the face of a changing climate.

Close to 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas and depends on the essential ecological, economic, and social benefits provided by urban trees and forests. Climate and extreme weather events pose threats to urban trees and forests requiring increased investment in management, restoration and stewardship. In the United States alone, urban trees store over 708 million tons of carbon and can help further reduce emissions by lowering electricity demand for summer air conditioning and winter heating. Well maintained urban forests can help address climate and extreme weather impacts through reducing runoff, buffering high winds, controlling erosion, and minimizing the impacts of drought. Urban forests also provide critical social and cultural benefits that may strengthen community resilience to climate change through promoting social interaction and community stability.

The Center was awarded in category 3: Utilizing Green Infrastructure to Manage and Mitigate Stormwater to Improve Water Quality. The project is called Making Urban Trees Count: A Project to Demonstrate the Role of Urban Trees in Achieving Regulatory Compliance for Clean Water Research. It will assist storm water managers with how to “credit” trees for runoff and pollutant load reduction in order to compare with other best management practices. A proposed design specification model for urban tree planting will address crediting, verification, cost-effectiveness, and tree health. For more information about the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, please visitwww.fs.fed.us/ucf/nucfac.html. Media contact: Karen Cappiella, Director of Research, Center for Watershed Protection 410-461-8323 / kc@cwp.org