THE LEAFLET

Montgomery Parks (Montgomery County, MD) and Casey Trees (Washington, DC) present the 2023 Urban Tree Summit.

This year, we are bringing back our hybrid conference with both virtual and field sessions. While our in person field sessions were quite popular and sold out fast – we’ve got plenty of room at our virtual Urban Tree Summit! Plus, we’re offering a discount on our day of virtual sessions for this final week:

Use promo code: ONE_WEEK_LEFT at check out for $10 off your virtual summit ticket. Or follow the link here for your discounted tickets.

We encourage all arborists, landscape industry and environmental/green industry professionals, engineers, designers, housing developers, and interested citizens to take advantage of this opportunity to join us online from wherever you are for a day of virtual sessions to learn from leading experts in the world of forestry.

Urban Tree Summit Virtual Session

Date: Wednesday, September 13th
Location: Zoom, link to be sent to ticket holders prior to event
Time: 8:15am – 1:00pm

Agenda:

Welcome Remarks – 8:15-8:30 AM

Session 1 – 8:30am – 9:30am
“Tree Protection Should Push Limits”
Mark Hartley, Consulting Arborist, The Arborist Network, Sydney Australia

If we are not pushing limits to save trees and occasionally failing, we are probably either failing to keep trees or losing yield and thus lose trees unnecessarily elsewhere due to urban sprawl. In an ideal world, large areas of space are isolated around trees during development activities. However, as urban densification occurs and the cost of real estate increases, there is growing pressure to reduce the size of these tree protection zones. Retaining trees with reduced protection areas means an increasing need for arboricultural input throughout construction. Arborists must know how to care for trees significantly impacted by development work and have a better understanding of root systems and how they respond to injury. We will look at how roots grow and function and see how this can be applied on development sites to achieve win-win outcomes.

Break – 9:30am – 9:40am

Session 2 – 9:40am – 10:40am
“Public Gardens can Play a Critical Role in Improving the Urban Forest: Case Study – The Morton Arboretum”
Lydia Scott, Director of The Chicago Region Tree Initiative, The Morton Arboretum

Public gardens can play unique and critical roles in supporting urban forests and should be seen as a significant resource for knowledge, expertise, application, and support to communities, landowners and managers, wherever they exist. This presentation will discuss how The Morton Arboretum is working through the Chicago Region Trees Initiative to support healthy trees, forest ecosystems, and the people who manage them.

Break – 10:40am -10:50am

Session 3 – 10:50am – 11:50am
“Living on the Edge: Distinguishing Forests, their Ecosystem Services, and their Vulnerability within the Urban Tree Canopy”
Matthew Baker, Professor, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

When viewed from above, many eastern cities appear to contain substantial amounts of woodland. High resolution mapping has led to increased recognition of these “urban forests” and their ecosystem services; though expected services are often derived from extrapolating what is known about rural counterparts. So how should metropolitan agencies approach urban forest inventory and assessment, especially on what is often a limited budget? This presentation will propose a rapid sampling protocol to understand current urban woodland conditions, using Baltimore City as a case study. Sampling and mapping plays a crucial step in understanding broader forest patterns, distinguishing urban forests from other forms of canopy, and allows decision makers more information on multiple scales of spatial organization. Results from this approach will be discussed, as well as the implications of such approaches for assessing ecosystem services and sustainability monitoring.

Break – 11:50am – 12:00pm

Session 4 – 12:00pm – 1:00pm
“Choosing a Safe Tie-in Point (TIP) for Climbing”
Brian Kane, Professor, University of Massachusetts

Choosing an appropriate tie-in point (TIP) is a key to efficiently and safely work in a tree. A TIP that’s high and central in the crown provides maximum mobility for a climber, but the TIP also has to be strong enough to bear the loads associated with climbing. Until recently, very few measurements of such loads were taken. Starting with the ITCC in 2017, Dr. Kane has measured loads at the TIP for a variety of situations including ascents, descents, limb walks and swings, and falls. This presentation will present the findings from those studies.

How to View
The virtual session will be held over zoom, and the link will be sent out to ticket holders prior to the event

CEUs
Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be awarded by the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA), American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), MD Licensed Tree Expert (MD LTE), and Society of American Foresters (SAF). CEUs will be available for the virtual session, an online form will be available to participants during the virtual sessions to fill out to register for your CEUs. A recording of the sessions will be made available to participants, but CEUs are not available to receive from watching the recording.

CEUs Available: [4 – ISA], [4 – MDLTE], [4 – SAF], [ASLA – pending]