Elk Grove, California STRATUM Project

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Elk Grove, California STRATUM Project

Post by i-Tree Support » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:15 am

Note: We have been notified of the following project completed with i-Tree tools.

The City of Elk Grove’s City Council signed on to the Greenprint in May of 2005. In doing so, the City joined in partnership with the Sacramento Tree Foundation to determine the existing street tree canopy, a 40-year canopy goal, and a plan through which to reach this goal. Volunteers from throughout the region were recruited and trained to collect street tree data from a random three percent sample of the City’s streets.

Overall, the street trees in Elk Grove (both public and private) are distributed over the following land uses: 76.7% are in single family residential; 15.5% are in parks, medians, or vacant land; 3.3% are in multi-family residential; 2.4% are in small commercial; and 2.1% are in industrial and large commercial.

This assessment found that Elk Grove has 22.88 percent canopy cover over the City’s streets and sidewalks. Since Elk Grove has recently experienced a lot of development, the City’s urban forest is fairly young; and most street trees are located in residential areas. The urban forest species population is diverse, with only one species comprising more than 10% of the population. According to the data collected, over 76% of the street trees are in good condition, with no apparent problems.

This young healthy canopy cover provides a great deal of value in services to the urban environment. Energy savings were estimated at $848,656, air quality improvement at $549,552, stormwater runoff reduction $311,073 and property value increase $11,506,090--total benefit value: $13,215,361

Of course there are costs of managing the urban forest. We estimate the overall annual cost of managing Elk Grove’s urban forest, including private and public, is approximately $883,069. Balancing the benefits and costs, the net benefits are approximately $12,332,292 a year, with a benefit-cost ratio of $14.97 to $1.

Project Leader: Sacramento Tree Foundation (http://www.sactree.com)
Support: City of Elk Grove, CA
Report: http://www.egplanning.org/trees/UrbanCa ... ssment.pdf
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