PICTURE THIS.

Autumn 2000 is a notable landmark for AMERICAN FORESTS, as the organization celebrates 125 successful years of operation and brings its well-seasoned conservation knowledge into the 21st century with a spicy set of innovative computer hardware and software. Dusty gray and brown folders are stuffed with aging black and white pictures that tell the story of conservation battles past. Photographs of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Bernhard Fernow, and Aldo Leopold are mixed with those of tree stumps wider than two horses, charred forest landscapes as vast as the view through a Kodak camera, and a live Christmas tree being planted near the White House and dedicated by a U.S. president.

It is amazing that a thin coating of silver nitrate etched on paper can take you back in time and put you face to face with famous people, important events, and even critical conservation issues. As we enter a new century, computer-generated "pictures" provide the content for our new conservation effort. in 1875 the organization was new and its mission was to reverse the "rape and run" practices that were depleting the mature forests that covered the nation's new frontier.

Today our conservation concern is more subtle and closer to home. Sprawling urban America is replacing natural landscapes with roads, buildings, and parking lots. The negative impact of the gray impervious surfaces that dominate a city and displace the living ecosystem can be vividly documented and the value of the ecosystem's functions accurately calculated for decisionmakers using technology now available. These computer-generated pictures can not only record history, but also they can look into the future, allowing us to measure the impact of what we do today and what we plan for tomorrow. Now images are comprised of millions of pixels, replacing gray-scale tones, with each pixel representing an object that can be precisely measured, stored, transmitted, and duplicated. This new technology allows us to view, understand, and communicate environmental issues better than ever before.

A July 1999 U.S. News and World Report story describing AMERICAN FORESTS' analysis of the changing landscape around metropolitan America commented that, "Like the aging of a familiar face, the decline in city trees has been so gradual as to be almost imperceptible." Indeed, it was the subtlety of the tree loss around many urban centers that led AMERICAN FORESTS to search for a new way to look at the landscape and communicate the findings. Computer technology provided the answer.

Digital images collected by Landsat satellite sensors and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology (an analytical tool that allows a computer operator to map, measure, and analyze the pixels that make up an image) gave AMERICAN FORESTS the tools we needed to show people how the landscape was changing. It also created a database to calculate the dollar value of a community's trees in terms of specific elements already on the city budget sheet: stormwater management and air quality.

But technology alone does not change the urbanizing landscape; it's up to the people in a community to decide how their landscape will grow and develop. How well we connect decisionmakers with this data will be the real measure of our success.

Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman reviewed the Puget Sound Regional Ecosystem Analyses data (Autumn 1998) as an example of the national trend on tree canopy loss--30 percent over 20 years--that has initiated public policy discussion.

In a keynote speech at AMERICAN FORESTS' 1999 National Urban Forest Conference, Glickman said, "We still have plenty of work to do to make Americans take notice of the dwindling natural resource base in their cities. We need to help them understand the cost associated with lost trees. And we need to help them understand what urban forestry can mean for them and their communities."

The Secretary's interest in urban trees has spread to cities and communities around the country. He has offered every governor support in planting a grove of historic trees and encouraged the U.S. Forest Service and state forestry agencies to expand their urban forestry accomplishments.

Many communities are working from the ground up to elevate the role of tree cover in their communities, using AMERICAN FORESTS' CITY green software to meet their goals. In Cincinnati, Ohio, natural resource manager David Gamstetter uses CITYgreen as he works with the University of Cincinnati's geography department to perform a detailed classification of aerial images of the city. The steep banks of the Ohio River are largely tree-covered as they pass through Cincinnati, and the city is determining the value of those forested banks in slowing stormwater runoff.

"It is important to bring trees into the same realm as utility poles, fire hydrants, and other utilities so that engineers and architects can plan around them," Gamstetter says.

Congressman Jim Moran, who represents an urban section of Virginia adjacent to Washington, DC, agrees. "Removing trees during building is the wrong approach. Those of us involved in making public policies need to press for more effective ways to keep a healthy tree canopy in our developing landscapes." Moran attended an AMERICAN FORESTS press conference on tree loss in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Two suburbs of Washington, DC, northern Virginia's Fairfax and Arlington counties, have used the data from the analysis as a basis for local decisionmaking.

AMERICAN FORESTS' 1999 Regional Ecosystem Analysis for Puget Sound revealed a dramatic loss of tree cover between 1972 and 1996. Officials from the adjacent city of Bellevue found that since 1972 forest in their community decreased by 43 percent and low canopy (less than 20 percent cover) increased by 41 percent.

Bellevue was losing functioning forest cover to a sparse and fragmented collection of trees, incapable of providing wildlife habitat or the riparian buffers needed by salmon.

Decisionmakers in Bellevue decided to look at their tree cover in greater detail to develop a strategy to reverse the trend toward tree loss. Using CITYgreen software for the analysis, they found in one sample neighborhood alone trees were providing $10 million worth of stormwater benefits and $140,000 in annual air pollution mitigation services. However, the area had lost $76 million worth of environmental benefits between 1972 and 1996 due to canopy loss.

The findings, presented by some of the 300 volunteers who were involved in the project, got the city council's attention. Prominent news coverage in the Bellevue Environmental Scan, an internal report that provides a sweeping look at change in the community, brought the issue to the fore-front and made a compelling case for the importance of retaining trees. As a result of the study, the council decided to transfer Native Growth Protection Tracts from private to public ownership, so these lands could be proactively managed for their ecological function. Taxpayer support was secured to protect these areas.

Bellevue's situation shows how a sudden realization of steadily declining tree cover can strike an emotional cord in a community. Powerful as that is, the associated economic costs are even more compelling to the people who make growth and development decisions. Satellite imagery provides an accurate picture of a region, making it possible to compare changes in the landscape over time, but it provides limited detail of local conditions; aerial images do that. When transferred to the computer screen, houses, trees, and impervious surfaces become data in the image and objects for scientific and engineering measures.

Programmed into the CITY green software is an air quality model developed by David Nowak, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service. Called UFORE, it has its roots in the Airshed system developed by EPA. CITYgreen also includes the engineering expertise of Don Woodward, the national hydrologist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and a leading authority on stormwater planning. Other technical models include energy consumption and carbon storage and sequestration.

By combining computerized technology with the expertise of scientists and engineers to analyze the ecology around the places where most people live, we can make smarter decisions about our communities in the future. The findings produce a strong argument for changing the way metropolitan areas are designed and built.

Urban areas that are green are more livable, less expensive to operate, and more durable. Saving the greenscape in metropolitan areas is both a political and an engineering challenge more effectively addressed with the aid of science and technology. For example, cities that build tree cover into their landscapes will save significant money in stormwater management. Trees slow the movement of stormwater and function as nonstructural stormwater management devices. When cities increase tree cover, they reduce stormwater management costs. When they increase the green infrastructure, they improve air quality and reduce energy consumption.

There is a quiet technology revolution underway, and we are in the middle of it whether we know it or not. City managers have been using GIS technology for many years to make city government more efficient and effective. The technology applications seem endless, ranging from drinking water to law enforcement. The technology's ability to merge data offers community leaders a huge opportunity to bring natural resource issues into the urban infrastructure and decisionmaking process.

Garland, Texas, is expanding its stormwater formula to include information from a recent CITYgreen analysis that showed the value of the city's existing urban forest canopy in stormwater costs. Landowners there are assessed a stormwater fee based on the amount of impervious surface area on their land, giving them a financial as well as quality of life incentive for maintaining and increasing trees.

The Garland analysis modeled the effects of trees in slowing stormwater, given various urban development options. Findings suggest that if Garland's existing tree canopy cover was removed, the city would have to contend with an additional 18.5 million cubic feet of stormwater during a peak storm event. Building stormwater retention facilities to handle this additional stormwater would cost about $850,000 annually, based on a conservative, $2 per cubic foot cost of constructing stormwater retention ponds. The analysis is based on the NRCS's methodology for assessing stormwater flow in small urban watersheds. Known as Technical Release 55 (TR-55), the model is the most widely used for this application in the U.S.

As we enter the 21st century, science and technology are coming together in ways that can help us build better communities and address the fact that tree cover is being displaced by urban sprawl. AMERICAN FORESTS has embraced the information age and is making good use of the newest technology, thanks in large part to our high-tech partners ESRI and ERDAS.

However, the new technology we use today is deeply rooted in the land conservation concerns of our past. The founding members of the organization were concerned about the loss of trees relevant to their time which was on a new frontier. Today we are concerned about the tree loss that is relevant to our time, that being displaced by expanding urban areas. The times and location of the tree loss have changed, but the conservation concerns of the 125-year-old organization have not. Today we feel lucky to have new technology that is helping us see the subtle changes in the tree-covered landscapes that are festering throughout the countryside.

Gary Mall is vice president and Cheryl Kollin is director of AMERICAN FORESTS' Urban Forest Center.

COMING SOON

New technology allows us to look at the landscape in a new way, and the techniques we are learning today are setting the stage for more dramatic developments in the near future. I doubt words can describe the impact new computer technology will have on our ability to see and understand our natural environment. Imagine living in Philadelphia or New York two and a half centuries ago and reading a newspaper story on Ben Franklin's experiment in electrical conductivity. Who could have imagined what electricity traveling along a wire would mean to the 21st century?

Developments in image analysis and GIS technology may produce a similar shockwave. Jack Dangermond, president of ESRI, a leading GIS software developer, has effectively demonstrated how adding the element of geography to an information system creates a computer-operated tool that brings diverse agencies in a city together to work off the same page and helps them make complex calculations at the same time.

Lorrie Jordan, president of ERDAS, a leading image analysis software developer, has used his company to create powerful image-interpreting software. The software creates a digital database out of a picture so that a pixel can tell a thousand words. A third piece of this puzzle comes into play with advancements in the quality of digital images.

I have recently been exposed to the advancements taking place in the imagery field while serving as a committee member for the ASPRS, the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. I have learned that the digital imagery that is used by most communities today provides only a small portion of the data that is or very soon will be available to them.

There is a wide array of new data collection devices being used already, and they are coming onto the market like a flood. The potential of the new imagery is clear if you remember that pictures are digital images made up of pixels, and the data in each pixel is the information needed for decisionmaking. This is a significant event for trees because they were not part of the city infrastructure database in the past.

The tabular databases that provide information about land parcels, utility pipes, or transportation corridors might not even come from a digital image. Many come from engineering drawings and survey maps. Nothing brings the attributes of the urban infrastructure closer to the natural ecosystem than a digital pixel. When GIS technology is used to calculate data collected through the digital image that sees the landscape as it is, decisionmakers will see and understand more than ever before. This new information will be good for trees and help demonstrate the value of a green infrastructure.