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Assessment of ecosystem services provided by urban forests: Public lands within the Urban growth Boundary of Corvallis, oregon
Citation:
PHILLIPS, D. L., C. A. BURDICK, B. Merja, AND N. Brown. Assessment of ecosystem services provided by urban forests: Public lands within the Urban growth Boundary of Corvallis, oregon. Presented at Oregon Society of American Foresters meeting, Albany, OR, April 07 - 09, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
One recent research focus of EPA is quantifying a range of ecosystem services, the benefits that ecosystems provide to humans, in order to promote informed natural resource management decisions and to assess the effectiveness of existing environmental policies.
Description:
One recent research focus of EPA is quantifying a range of ecosystem services, the benefits that ecosystems provide to humans, in order to promote informed natural resource management decisions and to assess the effectiveness of existing environmental policies. A case study is underway to assess ecosystem services throughout the Willamette River Basin, Oregon, and to develop methods to examine the potential effects of stressor and policy scenarios on them. Trees in urban environments provide a number of benefits relating to air and water quality, climate moderation, and aesthetics. We focus here on ecosystem services provided by trees on public lands within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) of Corvallis, Oregon. Ongoing management programs have developed inventories of trees on the main campus of Oregon State University (OSU; >4300 trees) and of street trees in the City of Corvallis public right of way (>13,200 trees). To supplement these data bases, we also sampled 99 0.2-acre plots randomly located on public lands within the UGB. We have completed preliminary analysis of the two inventories using STRATUM, an urban forest model developed by the USDA Forest Service and collaborators; analysis of the third sampling data set is still underway. Based on tree measurements, air quality monitoring data, and climate data, STRATUM estimates air pollutant reductions for four air pollutants (O3, N2O, SO2, PM10), carbon sequestration, stormwater runoff reduction, building energy savings due to shading, and aesthetic value. These are evaluated in both biophysical units and their economic value. The economic benefits were estimated at $97/tree and $65/tree for the OSU and City inventories, respectively. About 60-70% of this was attributed to aesthetic benefits (estimated by what their effect would be on private real estate market value), with the remainder due to biophysical impacts on air and water quality, energy and CO2. Total benefit estimates exceeded $400,000 for OSU and $800,000 for the City. Ecosystem service assessments like this can help in defining “the big picture” of benefits provided by natural resources and in doing cost/benefit evaluations of different policy or management options.