COMMENTS

FROM THE CHAIR

Hi, all.

We are excited for the upcoming 13^th Annual Great NC Tree Conference that will be held in Greensboro, North Carolina on 15 and 16 September. Please register if you not yet done so. We have developed an education tract that will benefit our entire membership. This year's conference theme is “Back to Basics”. The agenda is packed full of field experts presenting a range of topics including tree pruning, urban soils, urban wildlife, and so much more.

The North Carolina Wildlife Federation has announced its 58th Annual Governors’ Conservation Achievement Awards.  I am thrilled that the NCUFC will receive the 2022 Conservation Organization of the Year Award! We are receiving this award in recognition of our sustainable development of urban forests and implementation of the Bradford pear tree eradication program in partnership with the NC Wildlife Federation, NC Cooperative Extension and NC Forest Service. What a great honor this award is for us. Such recognition demonstrates the commitment and hard work all of our members and volunteers give daily to keep our state green and shaded.

See you all in September in Greensboro.

Jeff Kish

Board Chair, NC Urban Forest Council

Bartlett Tree Experts, Raleigh 

North Carolina Urban Forest Council

P.O. Box 37416

Raleigh, NC 27627

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Original news articles by Kathryn B. Reis

Public domain images from pxhere.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Council Affairs

2022 Great NC Tree Conference:  

Back to Basics

Greensboro, NC

September 15-16th

Other Forestry Related Events

USFS Urban Forest Connections Webinar:  

Mitigating Urban Heat

Online discussion of policy, practice and research

August 10, 1:00 to 2:15 p.m.

NC Urban Wood Group Webinar

Challenges and Success in Urban Wood

Learn how to build your own urban wood business

September 8, 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

COUNCIL NEWS

Are you ready for summer storms?

by Mark Foster, City Arborist

City of Asheville

Okay, see if this has happened to you, too. 

You watch your local meteorologists, as they wear their protective helmets leaning into the wind, that the monster hurricane that will beat all hurricanes is currently ravaging some poor coastal community. This same hurricane is headed your way. 

As the tree manager in your community, you engage in tense meetings with all the upper management folks, ranging from Public Works and Parks and Recreation to General Services, the Fire Department and other emergency response teams. Everyone is on the edge of their chairs worried that this storm is the big one and maybe it is. You work with your colleagues to analyze the event from all angles and develop an emergency response plan. Or perhaps your planning team reviews and acts upon a response strategy typed up in a big binder. You determine the equipment and tools are ready for the storm’s arrival. You also discover shortages in various supplies and gear. This spurs you to make multiple hasty phone calls, write countless emails, and shop rapid for necessary supplies. Your work becomes more frantic as the storm lumbers closer. Now you are assessing your backlog of unaddressed work orders for risk tree removals and scour your tree inventory to determine which risk trees lack a work order. You beat yourself up for not getting more done to make certain the public is safe from dead trees that will likely topple during the storm. You sleep less than you normally do. 

Once the storm arrives, “it’s on” now. Your crews are opening roads for emergency vehicles halted by fallen trees, of which there are dozens upon dozens. Trees have fallen on houses and cars. You document damage and coordinate multiple crews of borrowed people, all of whom were loaned by the department officials with whom you met before the storm. You pull off the road to catch your breath and start to notice something you couldn’t have imagined before the storm arrived. 

Most of the trees that came down were not the ones you were so worried about when reviewing the uncompleted work orders. Most of the fallen trees look healthy and never sparked concern from local citizens. You know the calls I am talking about -- the calls where the person is positive that this particular dead tree will not survive the next rain storm, much less the next hurricane. Yet that flagged tree is still standing in all its dead, rotting glory. You’re looking at it through your windshield. And as you drive around some more, you see more of the trees you marked for removal are STILL standing while a bunch of other trees that looked fine before the storm cover the ground like a spilled box of matches. What the heck man?!

Trees are funny that way, aren’t they? You think you know how to assess them, depending on all the most up to date practices and training. Yet they still pull that weird stuff on you.  

Oh well. If you wanted a boring, predictable job you would work with something less complex, dynamic and amazing than trees. Embrace the unexpected y’all.

Urban Forestry Awards

During the Great NC Tree Luncheon at our annual conference this September, Executive Director Leslie Moorman and Board of Directors Chair Jeffery Kish will celebrate the progress several individuals and groups have made to manage, grow and protect North Carolina's urban forests. Be sure to attend the conference to learn more about the significant contributions the following individuals and groups have made during the past year.

• Outstanding Program or Project - Bradford Pear Bounty Program, in recognition of the progress Kelly Oten of North Carolina Cooperative Extension and Tara Moore of North Carolina Wildlife Federation have made to reduce the establishment of the invasive Bradford pear tree across North Carolina. 

• Outstanding Professional - Liz Riley of Alamance Community College, in recognition of her implementation of the Arboriculutre Certificate and Apprenticeship Program to aid career development efforts in the field of urban forestry.

• Outstanding Volunteer - Connie Parker of Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, in recognition of her steadfast dedication to tree advocacy and community engagement in the City of Wilmington.

NATIONAL STORIES

Urban wood movement looks to capture value, carbon from city trees

by Chris Hubbuch, Wisconsin State Journal

When architect David Rousseau designed a manufacturing facility for Promega Corp., he specified a unique material for the lobby stairs: Walnut trees from the biotech company’s land.

Cut for various reasons over the preceding decades, the trees had been sawed and dried at a nearby mill and stored on the Fitchburg campus for just such a use.

Rousseau, who lives in British Columbia but has worked with Promega on multiple projects over the past three decades, designed the $120 million Feynman Center to look more like a retreat than a factory, with soaring laminated wood beams and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a restored prairie.

Incorporating local timber was a way to honor the trees while making use of locally sourced materials.

“We love the quality of wood, we love to work with wood,” Rousseau said. “If we have to remove them, we like to see them reborn in place.”

Most of the lumber used in U.S. construction comes from managed forests, where trees grow tall and straight, producing wood that can be efficiently harvested and milled into uniform products.

Trees cut from city streets and lots are generally considered waste to be ground into mulch for ground cover or thrown into landfills.

That urban wood could provide a valuable stream of locally sourced building materials that could lock up millions of tons of heat-trapping gases. The only problem is figuring out how to create markets for an irregular material in a mass-production economy.

A network of arborists, municipalities, mills and manufacturers is working to change that by promoting urban wood as a valuable carbon-trapping resource that can be used for pallets, furniture and even commercial construction.

As globe warms, infected pines starve and disease-causing fungi thrive

by Emily Caldwell of ScienceDaily 

The high heat and low water conditions produced by global warming weaken pine trees' resistance to disease by hindering their ability to mount an effective defense at the same time that pathogenic fungi in their tissues become more aggressive, new research suggests.

The study is the first to simultaneously examine metabolic gene expression in both host trees and the pathogens attacking them under normal and climate-change conditions. The findings help explain the mechanisms behind what has become a well-known fact: The warming world makes trees more susceptible to disease.

The study was conducted on Austrian pines, which are native to southern Europe and used ornamentally in the United States. Researchers tested climate change conditions' effects on the trees after infection by two related fungi that have killed large swaths of these pines over time.

"We decided to study the effects of the combined stresses of higher temperatures and lower water availability because that's what trees will experience in the future," said senior author Enrico Bonello, professor of molecular and chemical ecology of trees in The Ohio State University Department of Plant Pathology.

"Within three days of infection under climate-change conditions, the tree was pulled in two different directions: It was deprived of carbon by both reduced photosynthesis and enhanced acquisition of the carbon by the fungi. When we're talking about carbon, we're talking about sugars, food and reserves for all other metabolic processes in the trees, including growth and defense."

LOCAL STORIES

New urban forestry specialist at NC Forest Service

by Andrew Pleninger, NCFS Head of Urban & Community Forestry

Please join me in welcoming Bailey McDade, our new Urban Forestry Specialist at the NC Forest Service. Bailey comes to us from Jasper, Texas, where she worked as a Natural Resource Specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Sam Rayburn Reservoir. Her duties included planning and implementing natural resource projects, park administration and management, and coordinating partnerships and outreach. 

Bailey also has experience as a Forestry Technician and Aid for the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona. While in working in the Grand Canyon State, she earned her Firefighter Type 1 designation so that she could control wildfires and execute prescribed burns. Prior to her post in Arizona, Bailey held multiple jobs with the Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation:  Natural Resource Specialist, Conservation Corps Crew Leader, and Conservation Corps Program Manager of 75+ AmeriCorps members.

Bailey has a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Stewardship from Colorado State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from Virginia Tech. Bailey and her fiancé are both from Farifax, Virginia, and have made their home here in Raleigh. 

I believe Bailey’s diverse and extensive knowledge and experience in natural resource management, training, program outreach and partnership building make her a great fit for the Urban Forestry Specialist position, the NC Forest Service, and the NC urban & community forestry community.

You can reach Bailey at via email (Bailey.McDade@ncagr.gov) or phone (919-857-4842).

Is beech leaf disease impacting your trees? 

28 July 2022 blog by Davey Resource Group 

Both native and ornamental beech tree species are susceptible to beech leaf disease. 

The disease is associated with a nematode worm called Litylenchus crenatae spp. mccannii that infects beech buds and leaves. But knowing if your beech tree is impacted will take looking for some classic signs of infection. Spotting these symptoms early can help make a difference in catching a problem before it becomes too detrimental to your tree’s health.

You can see symptoms of the disease mostly in leaves and can be visible from leaf out in May until the leaves fall off in October. You’re looking for:

• Distinct darker stripes between the veins (best seen on the underside of the leaf)
• Curling and distortion
• Leathery texture

Beech leaf tree disease can kill a mature tree within 6 to 10 years. But it is most damaging to young trees, which can die in less than 5 years after the first signs of infection appear. In places where the disease is well established, it has proven fatal to 90% of saplings.

Remember, early bird registration ends on 30 August.  Register today!

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