Category: Uncategorized

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Silva Cells Installed–You’re invited to view them!

This project is kick-starting Silva Cells installation along the San Pedro waterfront as part of the Port O’ Call Promenade Project. These Silva Cells provide vertical and horizontal rooting areas to promote the Promenade tree’s long-term health and viability. This has been a cooperative and effective effort between green and grey Infrastructure involving Silva Cells, Lightweight Cellulose Concrete, and the Seawall.  More information from each cooperator:  Griffith Company Robert Sales Jr Saeid Dehnad, PMP Carol Lee DeepRoot Green Infrastructure, LLC Port of Los Angeles

Invitations are extended for meeting on-site to view live installation of Silva Cells.  Contact pavitra@deeproot.com  Pavitra Rammohan to schedule for these dates: 

  1. Friday/Oct 16th – After 11 am
  2. Tuesday/Oct 20th– After 10 am
  3. Wednesday/Oct 21st – After 11 am
  4. Thursday/Oct 22nd –After 10 am

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Green Infrastructure for Sustainable Urban Spaces

The October 7, 2020 meeting explored  Green Infrastructure Solutions to build Sustainable Urban Spaces.    archived video

Our local agencies and communities are envisioning the implementation of “Complete Streets” with real trees that turn inhospitable environments into pleasant places for pedestrians who are walking in the afternoon summer sun and heading to bus/train stations or local grocery stores. Urban street-lined trees hold the potential to transform an industrial stretch lined by warehouses and empty lots into a more livable, greener alleys and streets that captures, treats, and infiltrates runoff and thereby employing innovation into the streetscape design while maximizing land use efficiency and achieving full storm water compliance.

Panel Speakers:

  • Panel Topic Introductions (Pavitra Rammohan, Panel Organizer)
  • Brian Widener, City Forester, The City of San Diego. Role of Agencies in Reimagining Urban Streets; Value of effective planning, policymaking and enforcement, and implementation. Effective ways to navigate deep challenges such as economic impacts caused due to COVID, recent riots, while keeping the focus on goals of promoting healthy trees.
  • Alvin Papa, City Engineer, The City of Long Beach. Channeling perspectives, lessons learned, and benefits accomplished in building Green Streets from our neighbors in the Region. Recent experiences from past and ongoing Streetscape enhancement/ Green Street Projects involving LID/BMP Solutions including trees and its positive influence in growing economic activity within the City communities
  • Kevin Ham, Economic Development Director, The City of Vista. Sharing recent experiences with Paseo Santa Fe Streetscape Enhancement projects enhanced in value through trees and Green Infrastructure solutions.
  • Suzie Wiest with Village Nursery. Review of suitable urban street trees. Navigating O&M Challenges. Success Stories.
  • Sean O’Malley, Landscape Architect. Managing Principal SWA Group, Laguna Beach. Experiences of collaborating with progressive agencies with a Green Infrastructure vision as a Landscape Architect Leader. Sharing recent work with the City of Laguna Beach with the Downtown Action Plan project in enhancing the downtown area with trees and streetscape enhancement.
  • Pavitra Rammohan, Region Manager, DeepRoot Green Infrastructure. Role of technology in promoting healthy tree growth and employing innovation into the streetscape design while maximizing land use efficiency and achieving full storm water compliance.
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Webinar and Meeting available on demand

Thank you to our speakers and all who attended yesterday’s webinar. If you missed it both the webinar and our general meeting can be viewed on demand. https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/zxZr2QrFPVpfBRbWH9BK4hEfNRmmVdBrmZBGspo3wbc3QX_jG2PhnrkFoTwJN8_9.cVc0EUmpayC4oKom

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Call for Nominations!

SDRUFC is putting out a call for nominations for SDRUFC officers.  Our Operating Guidelines have been finalized with the goal of increasing participation while streamlining processes.  This is a great opportunity to serve your community and this organization.  Please submit your nominations for officers using this form by November 1st.  You may also use the second part of the same form to volunteer for one of our new committees.  Thank you all for your support!

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Come join us for our first Virtual Webinar and General Meeting!

It’s been a long time coming! – Six months to be exact.  We are back and excited to meet with everyone again.  October 7th at 11am we will present a webinar and then follow up with a virtual meeting.  Registration is FREE.  Looking forward to “seeing” you all soon!

Please Register here

Our local agencies and communities are envisioning the implementation of “Complete Streets” with real trees that turn heated environments into pleasant places for pedestrians walking in the afternoon summer sun and heading to bus/train stations or local grocery stores. Urban trees hold the potential to transform an industrial stretch lined by warehouses and empty lots into more livable, greener alleys and streets that captures, treats, and infiltrates runoff and thereby employing innovation into the streetscape design while maximizing land use efficiency and achieving full storm water compliance.

A webinar link will available and shared via email the day of the event.

For certified arborists, ONE CEU will be available for this event.

 

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Community-focused Tree Planting Meeting Notes, held on July 31

Community engagement for tree planting is the focus of the newly-launched Kate Sessions Commitment, http://sdrufc.com/katesessions/.  The Kate Sessions team and Councilmember Ward’s office facilitated an informal “listening meeting” via videoconference to identify opportunities to work collectively to plant and care for more trees. Twenty four attendees identified watering, funding, equity, sidewalks, tree loss and damage, and other issues. Meeting notes

As climate action and community equity become increasingly urgent, the additional $300,000 for tree planting in the City of San Diego offers more opportunities to invest in underserved communities.  

Based on the information shared at this meeting, ten actions were identified that could be implemented immediately with current resources and authorities. These could be considered “Climate Equity Shifts.”

  1. Apply Climate Equity Index to expending FY21 additional tree planting funds. 
  2. Outreach to community groups about healthy, heat, and shade, and assist with identifying places to plant trees. 
  3. Plant trees in the right-of-way street easement that extends 10 ft from the curb, not just in parkways.  
  4. Waive permit fee for removal of concrete to plant trees. 
  5. Give priority to trees requested for groups of 6 to 10 trees. 
  6. Allow homeowners to have some choice in tree species planted. 
  7. Identify a Promise Zone jobs project to water boulevard trees weekly.  
  8. Restore Urban Corps tree planting purchase orders. 
  9. Add braces to stakes to protect young trees planted from 15-gallon containers. 
  10. Build on Kate Sessions Commitment campaign for communities to plant 100 trees, with education to residents and businesses about planting smaller trees with business and private financing. 

There are compelling reasons to plant and care for trees, and to engage communities in these investments.

  1.  Climate change is accelerating, cities are warming, health impacts are more evident, and public desire for action is increasing. Trees are affordable, amazing and highly visible ways to cool neighborhoods and implement Goal 5 of the City’s Climate Action Plan
  2.  All San Diegans deserve healthy neighborhoods, yet decades of inequitable public investments (locally and nationally) have perpetuated environmental injustice.

Traditional approaches to public programs need to be assessed, and the pandemic conditions may drive us to innovative, effective ways to work together.

  1. A sobering reality is that public trees can be easily ignored (not watering), vandalized, and die within a few years of planting. To counter this, neighborhoods can and should have a hand in deciding where and how the City invests in trees.
  2. There are now grants, an additional $300,000 in City of San Diego tree planting budget, and ratepayer programs that are committed to planting trees, but they lack locations in targeted (mostly underserved) communities that have someone accepting tree watering agreements. Finding common interests (trees, places to plant trees) will be facilitated by conversations and collaborations across sectors and communities.

For further information, contact Anne Fege, Ph.D., MBA, Urban forester and co-convenor of Kate Sessions Commitment, afege@sdrufc.com or Brian Elliott, Policy Advisor to Councilmember Chris Ward, belliott@sandiego.gov.

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Community engagement? for $300,000 added for tree planting, City of San Diego

The City of San Diego retained tree maintenance work and added $300,000 for planting trees, in the FY2021 urban forestry budget. This followed the Independent Budget Analyst recommendation that the funds address the backlog of 1,800 tree requests. Attention to the details will ensure that these additional funds are clear investments in climate action and environmental justice, and in community engagement for tree care and planting. THANK YOU! to all nine councilmembers, who advocated for keeping the urban forestry budget!

The additional $300k for tree planting (approved in the FY 2021 budget) can be a substantial “down payment” to both Climate Action Plan (CAP) implementation and environmental justice.

  1. Climate change is accelerating, cities are warming, and public desire for action is increasing. Trees are affordable, amazing and highly visible ways to cool neighborhoods and implement goal 5 of the CAP.
  2. All San Diegans deserve healthy neighborhoods, yet decades of inequitable public investments (locally and nationally) have perpetuated environmental injustice.  The City can acknowledge and address some environmental justice wrongs by planting and caring for trees in these neighborhoods.

Traditional approaches to public programs may need to be assessed, and pandemic realities may drive us to innovative, effective ways to work together and make investments.

  1. Reliance on the “free tree” request program (that developed in FY 2018 when the Mayor added $300k for tree planting) and continued with the annual $100k for planting trees in ROW in the order that residents have requested a “free tree. City staff contact residents to confirm their watering agreement, and then a contractor plants one or two trees in their parkway.
  2. A sobering reality is that public trees can be easily ignored (not watering), vandalized, and die within a few years of planting. Neighborhood pride will counter that, and communities can and should have a hand in deciding where and how the City invests in trees.  Detroit’s experience was that 1/4 of the trees were rejected in their 25,000-tree planting effort because of distrust of the city, even with awareness of shade tree cooling benefits. The survey identified success factors: inviting community (not individual resident) tree care, engaging youth, and offering some choice in species planted. NYTimes article
  3. There are many success stories of community engagement in other cities, notably Los Angeles and Sacramento. The CityPlants program in Los Angeles (financed by LA Water and Power and others) incorporates many of these elements, https://www.cityplants.org/, and may be a model for San Diego.

Community engagement for tree planting has started with Kate Sessions Commitment, and now needs political support.

  1. Community members and urban forestry professionals have been working for more than a year on a campaign to plant healthy trees for healthy neighborhoods. (This was launched after 30 spoke on urban forestry issues, at the April 18, 2019 meeting of the Council’s Environment Committee.)
  2. From this, the Kate Sessions Commitment started in January, inviting communities to plant 100 trees annually and setting up processes to engage communities and educate residents. These feature Kate Sessions’ legacy (planting 100 trees for use of City land for her nursery), focus on neighborhoods with low canopy, share how to plant and care for trees, and the power of “taking action” to invest in our future.
  3. Tree planting could and should be prioritized by the climate equity index that was proposed in the 2019 CAP appendix.  These are mostly neighborhoods in districts 4, 8 and 9.
  4. Funds could launch a public education program. Some neighborhoods have few parkways and parks for additional tree planting, so tree canopy increase must rely on residential and commercial tree planting and care. The 2008 General Plan established policies for mitigating urban heat that included public outreach and education, and these were affirmed in the 2018 Five-year Urban Forest Management Plan action steps.
  5. There are many innovative, effective ways to work together in new ways, as Covid-19 has been teaching us. Conversations and collaboration need to begin, to apply collective and creative action to this “new” $300,000 for tree planting.

Contact Anne Fege, afege@sdrufc.com,  Chair of the Community Forest Advisory Board, City of San Diego, and Executive committee of the San Diego Regional Urban Forests Council.

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Online learning–Summer 2020 webinars

The bi-monthly meeting on June 3 isn’t happening!  (first Wednesday of even-numbered months)  But we recommend that you connect to and learn from one or more webinars in the month of June!

 

California Urban Forests Council (CaUFC)

 

ReScape California (landscape professionals)

  • June 4, 9,11: Design Qualification Training
  • June 15, 17, 19: Rated Landscape Rater Training
  • June 18: Maintenance Qualification Renewal
  • June 22, 26: Advanced Professional Workshops (Green Stormwater Infrastructure, Integrated Pest Management)
  • June 23, 25, 30; July 2,7,9: Maintenance Qualification Training

Information at https://rescapeca.org/education/for-professionals/qualified-professional-training/

 

Arbor Day Foundation (archived webinars)

  • Greening your local community
  • Nature-based pathways to a stable climate

 

Urban Forest Connections, webinar series

  • June 10, 2020 | 1:00-2:15pm ET, The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities
    Sarah Charlop-Powers, Natural Areas Conservancy, Clara Pregitzer, Natural Areas Conservancy, Rich Hallett, USDA Forest Service. More information on this webinar at https://www.fs.fed.us/research/urban-webinars/ , also archived webinars on urban forestry topics, offered most second Wednesdays each month.

 

Utility Arborist Association

  • May 20, 11am-12pm: Real Time Remote Sensing Intelligence
  • May 27, 11am-12pm: Measure ROW Biodiversity and Ecological Functioning to Add More Value in Responsible Reporting
  • June 24, 10am-11am: Does the “Right Tree, Right Place” Principle Unintentionally Wrong the Public Right-of-Way?

Webinars are free and offer 1 CEU. All at this link: https://www.gotouaa.org/project/webinars/

 

ISA Southern Extension

 

Urban Forest Connections, webinar series

  • June 10, 2020 | 1:00-2:15pm ET, The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities
    Sarah Charlop-Powers, Natural Areas Conservancy, Clara Pregitzer, Natural Areas Conservancy, Rich Hallett, USDA Forest Service. More information on this webinar at https://www.fs.fed.us/research/urban-webinars/ , also archived webinars on urban forestry topics, offered most second Wednesdays each month.
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Budget hearings for City of San Diego, FY 2021

Attendees at the San Diego Regional Urban Forest Council’s videoconference on May 6 recommended that a letter be sent to mayors, City councilmembers, and others about municipal tree maintenance funding. Letter was sent on May 26 and focuses on the following key points:

  • Tree maintenance keeps trees healthy and reduces city liabilities.
  • Trees cool cities, as climate changes accelerate.
  • Trees will buffer the next health and environmental

Notes from early May, 2020:

Please take time to advocate for trees and urban forest management, in the City of San Diego’s budget hearings! The severe budget proposals include eliminating $1.8 million for shade tree and palm trimming, and are likely to be sustained, but the importance of tree health to neighborhoods, parks, urban cooling, and public health must be heard.

Climate change is bigger than the pandemic and accelerating, and trees will still cool cities. Healthy street and park trees are valuable city assets, and need annual investments in tree care and planting.

FIVE WAYS TO SUPPORT URBAN TREES:

  1. Write clear messages now–in your own words, personalized from suggested messages. Keep them to three points, with only 1-2 sentences after each point. The email messages have a limit of 200 words, and the phone-in testimony is likely to be one minute.
  2. Submit comments, at process for submitting comments . Comments received by 5:45 p.m. will be distributed to the Committee and posted online with the meeting materials. All webform comments are limited to 200 words. Process requests date of meeting and item number (see 5. below).  Comments submitted for April 30 hearing   368 examples!
  3. Submit your messages by 5:45 on the days before the department budget hearings, tailoring comments to the role of trees in each (parks, climate action, and street trees).
  4. Parks on Tuesday 9 am-Item 3, Sustainability (Climate Action), Tuesday 2 pm-Item 11, and Transportation, Wednesday, 9 am-Item 3, Capital Improvement Projects, Wed. 2 pm-Item 9   Budget committee agendas
  5. Provide phone call testimony during the individual budget hearings, after the Clerk introduces the item and opens the Public Comment line, likely limited to one minute. Then follow the steps outlined at  phone call procedure .
  6. Send additional-duplicate messages to your council member or ALL of the councilmembers directly, as six of them recommended budget increases for tree-related programs (in their January council memos).  Addresses:   barbarabry@sandiego.gov, chriscate@sandiego.gov, christopherward@sandiego.gov, georgettegomez@sandiego.gov, jennifercampbell@sandiego.gov, markkersey@sandiego.gov, monicamontgomery@sandiego.gov, scottsherman@sandiego.gov, vivianmoreno@sandiego.gov

SOME MESSAGES:

  1. Trees in parks and streets are assets that cool cities, contribute to public health, and provide “green” stormwater and other ecosystem services. Trees are investments in climate adaptation and carbon sequestration, as we know that climate change is accelerating and far bigger than the pandemic. This will require sustained budgets to maintain existing trees and plant healthy trees.
  2. The proposed reduction for tree trimming is $1.8 million, and will eliminate maintenance of shade trees and extend palm trimming to 8 years. Both are unacceptable. Tree planting must continue to implement the City’s climate action plan, at least $300,000 per year. There is a backlog of 1,800 tree requests and the yearly budget of $100K will only plant 600 trees.
  3. Covid-19 is showing us how quickly health and economic impacts can result from natural causes. Climate change has been slow and sometimes unnoticed, but there are high risks for extended heat waves, storm-related disasters, drought and wildfires. Disadvantaged communities will be more vulnerable to health and economic impacts, and far less prepared than advantaged communities. Trees, parks, shade, and urban cooling will give respite to all city dwellers in future climate change.
  4. This is not the time to disregard the nature that sustains us. If tree maintenance is cancelled for a year, the effects of drought, pests, and tree failure multiply. The next natural disaster may seem like a surprise, but healthy trees will be there to serve San Diegans.
  5. [there are more than 200 words, so choose and edit!]

RESOURCES:

  1. This year, the City has assembled a great page of budget process details . There are schedules for budget hearings, ways to participate, and links to each department.
  2. Budget hearings can be watched live
  3. Budget page, https://www.sandiego.gov/finance/proposed , Attachment II has the key numbers, but there are no department-level budget documents yet. Transportation = reduce 0 urban forestry positions (4 horticulturalists and 8 tree care workers, currently all filled)), reduce contractual services by $1,217,000 for shade tree trimming and $600,000 for palm trimming. Park and Recreation, reduce 89 positions, reduce $5.9 million contract funds.
  4. Independent Budget Analyst report , 4/29/20. Page 162, Transportation Department: “The largest reduction is for tree trimming at $1.8 million. This reduction will negate the City’s ability to do all routine maintenance of shade trees throughout the City and will effectively increase the cycle of routine palm tree maintenance from 2 years to 8 years. The Department will mostly be able to conduct only reactive and emergency trimming.”
  5. San Diego Union-Tribune 4/16/20 article on FY 2021 budget gap, “Tree trimming, which had already been limited to palms-only during a previous budget cut, would be limited to emergency situations only. The savings would be $1.8 million.”
  6.  Resources for writing comments include tree benefits , tree benefits , trees and climate action