The urbanizing of NRCS.

When the former Soil Conservation Service rethought its way of helping localities, it came up with 50 good reasons why computer mapping does the trick.

The Soil Conservation Service was created during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s to provide landowners with technical advice on agricultural soil and water management. As the country urbanized, so did the SCS. Strategic planning in the early 90s yielded a new name - Natural Resources Conservation Service - and a new way of doing things. Six regional offices opened to partner with more than 3,000 locally run conservation district offices and help local authorities and land users protect and manage natural resources.

They soon found, though, that sophisticated planning tools were needed, tools that federal agencies in the bare-bones 90s no longer had the personnel or budget to develop. They turned instead to the private sector, and NRCS community planner Jack Bricker saw an opportunity to demonstrate the hard-dollar value of urban forests through a desktop software package - CITYgreen.

Developed by AMERICAN FORESTS, CITYgreen uses GIS software and sophisticated computerized mapping techniques to measure, map, and analyze urban ecosystems.

NRCS and the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) selected 50 conservation districts nationwide to test CITYgreen based on innovative proposals to use the software, which runs on a personal computer on ArcView. Each will use the software in different ways to solve local problems and facilitate local planning.

"I think this package has tremendous potential, but we can't evaluate something like this at headquarters," Bricker said. "It has to be tested in the field. I want to know what ground zero thinks about the usefulness of this tool ... to determine whether CITYgreen will become a permanent part of our program in 1998."

NACD rep Debra Bogar is enthusiastic: "With a dollar value attached to trees, the local conservation offices can be more persuasive about preserving greenspace," she said.

Stormwater Controls

On a map of southern Missouri, sprawling lakes with names like Bull Shoals and Table Rock look like crazy ink spills. In 1992, these lakes attracted nearly 6 million tourists to Taney County, which has a population of around 25,000. The visitors required food, drink, places to stay, and things to do, and by 1994, the permanent population increased more than 21 percent in just four years. The amount of impervious surfaces and congestion had grown even faster.

The combined pressure of the unexpected growth of both permanent and transient population was enough to stress any environment. The county was lacking in sediment/erosion control ordinances as well as plans for adequate stormwater control.

Dierdre Vest, resource conservationist for the NRCS in Taney County, said, "The drastic increase in impervious surfaces created by development combined with our steep slopes and thin soils meant stormwater control was critical."

By utilizing CITYgreen, planners will demonstrate to commercial developers and private homeowners that trees are not only aesthetic enhancements to property but also sound investments. Planners will place a dollar value on trees' ability to abate stormwater, to increase energy savings through shading, and to enhance air quality through carbon sequestration. Four sites have been selected for the initial project - two commercial developments and two residential.

To assemble necessary resources for the project, the Soil and Water Conservation District established a partnership with the city of Branson, the Missouri Department of Conservation and Resource Conservation and Development, and Southwest Missouri State University.

According to Vest, "None of us could do it alone. We needed to put together all our resources to get this project off the ground."

An Aging Forest

In Lawrence, Pennsylvania, pooling state and local resources will enable the city of New Castle to develop a management plan for its aging urban forest. Up to now, the city has been removing the old trees, but few have been replaced. A citizens' organization was formed to find a way to replant the forest. Robert Boos, district technician for the Lawrence County Conservation District, thinks CITYgreen can help.

The Conservation District is cooperating with the NRCS, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation of Natural Resources, the Resource Conservation and Development Council, Penn State Cooperative Extension, the city of New Castle Tree Commission, the Lawrence County Association of Township Supervisors, and the Lawrence County Planning Commission to utilize CITYgreen to determine the dollar value of urban reforestation.

Boos will be the point person for this complicated network of interests. He hopes the CITYgreen report will enable both the city and private citizens to understand that trees are a good investment with clear payoffs.

"Putting a dollar value on these environmental assets makes our case much stronger. We don't have to educate about the technical issues as much when policymakers and elected officials can see the simple dollar value of their decisions," Boos said.

Lawrence County also plans to use CITYgreen to develop stormwater management plans for the 16 townships in the county. With a population close to 100,000, only one township has a stormwater ordinance. "We hope to encourage private landowners and developers to plant trees by demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of utilizing vegetative cover to reduce stormwater runoff.

Fire Dangers

Across the country, the Santa Monica Mountains have been ravaged by fierce summer wildfires and washed out by winter floods over the last few years. After the destructive firestorms in the Oakland hills and the mountains over Malibu, the Los Angeles County Fire Department became concerned about the connectivity of the mature tree canopy in the Topanga Creek watershed and ordered homeowners to remove trees.

Although sensitive to the dangers of wildfires, citizen groups wanted to preserve the natural environment, the wildlife habitat, and the woodsy feel of their canyon homes. At the same time they were concerned that although tree removal might mitigate the summer fire danger, it might also result in more severe winter flooding.

In the narrow canyons, creeks, roads and utilities all share common space. "When the trees fail, the stream fails; when the stream fails, the roads fail and so on down the line," according to conservation biologist Rosi Dagit of the Resource Conservation District. With development continuing upstream, the culverts of Topanga Creek have already exceeded capacity and flooding has damaged homes, property, roads, and wildlife habitat.

The Conservation District plans to use CITYgreen in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Fire Department to model multiple scenarios. What happens if we take out 200 trees or 500? Which trees have the greatest benefit for stormwater abatement? How much more stormwater will flow as runoff under different tree removal alternatives?

One benefit of the southern California demonstration site is the new data it will generate on local ornamental, street, and native tree species, which are not common in most of the rest of the country.

"I see two major ways CITYgreen will be useful," said Dagit. "For policymakers and politicians, the numerical aspect is what is most useful. For professionals concerned about environmental decision making, I like the modeling feature."

All 50 CITYgreen test sites are in the early stages of work. They are required to submit status reports every three months for review by both the NRCS and the NACD.

Lynn MacDonald, a freelancer from Berkeley, California, often covers urban issues for American Forests.