By: Dan Buckler, Urban Forest Assessment Specialist
The scientific community continues to grow its understanding and appreciation of the ecosystem services that urban trees offer. That is, we now know more about the good trees do, but we also better understand what we don’t know. This nuanced perspective has manifested itself in updated estimates of ecosystem benefits within the Wisconsin Community Tree Map (WCTM).
The WCTM is a compilation of tree inventories from around the state, comprising 910,000 trees across 180 organizations. One of the application’s many interesting and useful functions is the estimation of trees’ eco-benefits. This information can be found for an individual tree simply by clicking it and then the “Eco-Benefits” box. The eco-benefits can also be estimated for a collection of trees by navigating to the “Hub” tab, then clicking “Stats” and “Ecosystem Benefits.”
Estimated benefits showcased in the tree map include annual stormwater reduction, air pollutant reduction and carbon sequestration, as well as lifetime carbon storage. All these benefits are expressed by quantity, volume or weight and by the monetary impact of the trees.
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