Tour des Trees: Last Call for Riders!

Have you said, "I wanna Iowa!" but have not yet registered for this year's Tour des Trees? This is the last call for registration for this year's ride! Registration will end on Monday, June 20. 

Full and partial ride day options are available to fit your schedule, so come out and ride all six days with us or do as few as just one. Either way, you'll be able to experience the great cycling state of Iowa while helping TREE Fund spread the word about tree science and proper tree care. 

Registration and information can be found at www.treefund.org/tourdestrees.

Not able to ride with us this year but need to get yourself some cool, new cycling gear? Our Tour des Trees bike gear is available to purchase and a small portion of the proceeds gets sent back to TREE Fund to help with costs involved with the tour. If you would like to purchase some 2022 Tour des Trees cycling apparel--which will be shipped directly to your home--visit the shop and place your order before June 27: Voler: Full-Custom Ordering - Tour des Trees 2022

This year's tour will take place from September 3 through 10 with ride options of one to six days to fit your schedule. Ride with us and help spread the word on proper tree care as we travel to Des Moines, Pella, Ames, Creston, and top off the ride with two nights at the Arbor Day Farm.

The Arbor Day Farm offers 260 acres of natural beauty and outdoor exploration. Riders will stay at the luxurious Lied Lodge, with soothing nature-inspired decor and will get to experience wine and cider tastings, hikes, tours, the Tree Adventure, a bonfire, presentations, and more. 

The TREE Fund has awarded more than $4.8 million in grants and scholarships for tree care research and programs and we could not do this without the support of our Tour des Trees riders and donors. Thank you to everyone that has supported the ride over the years and helped us continue our mission. Let's continue to do great things in the name of arboriculture! To support a Tour des Trees rider or team, visit www.tourdestrees.org.

Stella Dee: University of Massachusetts-Amherst, “Assessing the Mechanical, Physiological and Carbon Accounting Effects of Different Pruning Regimens” $25,000.

Although pruning is one of the most common arboricultural practices, the mechanical, physiological, and carbon management costs and benefits are not yet fully understood. Many benefits of shade trees, including temperature mediation, pollution capture, carbon reduction, and intercepting precipitation depend on maximizing leaf area, even as greater leaf area increases drag, lowers sway frequency, and perhaps increases likelihood of failure.

Meanwhile, the carbon costs associated with commercial tree care are significant; pruning a particular tree often involves large trucks, aerial lifts, chainsaws, chippers, tub-grinders, and stump grinders, all equipment that uses significant quantities of fossil fuels.

Prior research suggests that the arboriculture industry is responsible for seven times the carbon emissions of other industries of similar size (Luck et al. 2014). However, Petri et al.(2016) describe pruning practices as making the “single greatest” difference in industry carbon emissions. Much of the past research into the effects of pruning has been limited by its short duration, with trees being pruned and examined in time periods as short as a single day.

This project will attempt to reconcile some of these competing objectives to determine costs and benefits of different pruning regimes with respect to tree health and carbon accounting. In this project we will subject at least two species to six pruning treatments, including different severities of reduction and removal cuts, as well as different styles of removal cuts. We will quantify mechanical and physiological response to these treatments by assessing change in sway frequency, damping ratio:sprout growth, wound occlusion and leaf area for two years following pruning, measuring these response variables once each year over the duration. We will quantify management-related carbon emissions of the different treatments using updated versions of the equations developed by Nowak et al. (2002).

The outcomes of this work will help guide commercial arborists in understanding the effects of their pruning cuts, in thinking through which pruning cuts might be more appropriate in which situations, and in guiding municipal arborists and urban foresters to better understanding the carbon the emissions and leaf area implications resulting from arboricultural practices. 

Dr. John Ball: South Dakota State University, “Evaluation of Efficiencies Among Climbing Systems and Rope Diameter” for $13,992.

Climbing is a high-risk activity associated with many non-fatal and fatal injuries. While there are many causes for climbing incidents, an underlying factor may be fatigue due to inefficiencies in a climber’s ascending and work-positioning techniques. Fatigue has been cited as a factor in several climber fatality in OSHA investigation summaries. Efficiency is economy of motion. More efficiency means the worker is expending less energy to accomplish a task such as climbing. An efficient climber is not operating at maximum capacity so their performance can be prolonged and fatigue reduced. This is an important consideration for climbers as they may be aloft a significant period of the work day. This study will evaluate common tree-climbing systems, both moving-rope systems (MRS) and stationary-rope systems (SRS), and measure the efficiency and economy of tactics through the relationship between oxygen consumptions (VO2) and heart rate (HR) to determine the most efficient approaches.

Dr. Gregory Dahle: University of West Virginia, project “Determining failure characteristics from distribution outage reports” for $49,572.

Tree failures can lead to utility outages and understanding why trees fail will aid utilities in reducing outages. Our research will analyze utility tree outage reports from across the country to determine if failure patterns exist. Understanding the patterns in tree failures along distribution corridors will help in the development of models that can predict failures that impact the delivery of electrical power.  

We currently have databases derived from Eastern US utilities and we are seeking additional failure reports from across the United States. Our target is to obtain at least two databases from each of the ten USDA Forest Service region. Our analysis will determine (1) knowledge of the trees characteristics that are correlated to tree failures that cause outages; (2) develop protocol pertaining to the pertinent tree and site information to have collect during future outage reports; and (3) lay the foundation for a national utility tree failure database that will improve our ability to identify trees with elevate likelihoods of failure and thus reduce outages. 

Dr. Nina Bassuk: Cornell University, project “Producing Fibrous-Rooted Hickories Towards Commercial Production and Improved Transplanting” for $10,000.

Carya species, commonly referred to as hickories, include many stately, native trees, that offer superior ornamental and adaptable features with great promise for application in managed landscapes, especially urban environments. Additionally, nursery stock of species such as Carya illinoinensis (pecan), Carya laciniosa (kingnut hickory), and Carya ovata (shagbark hickory) are sought after due to their production of desirable nuts and potential for use in edible landscapes. Immense interest exists in effectively producing these trees, however, due to their lag-phase shoot growth and strong development of a taproot with minimal fibrous-root branching, these trees exhibit resistance to standard growing techniques and reduced transplant success.  

This study will provide new protocols to enable nursery growers and those that manage landscapes to produce and successfully transplant multiple species of highly desirable hickories.  

Objectives: 

1) Propagate hickories using the modified stool bed method. (Initial observations showed that hickories propagated this way produced fibrous root systems as opposed to tap-rooted species from seeding -grown trees.) 

2) Refine the modified stool bed method for hickory propagation by optimizing Indole Butyric Acid application 

3) Transplant fibrous -rooted hickories and tap-rooted 2-year-old seedlings to compare transplant success using root hydraulic conductivity and growth measurements. 

4) Replicate the transplant practices in commercial nurseries. 

Western Reserve Land Conservancy for their program “Western Reserve Land Conservancy’s Tree Steward Training Program” for $5,000.

Though once known as “The Forest City,” Cleveland has lost significant canopy over the last 70 years due to development, disease and lack of maintenance. Cleveland’s tree canopy cover is now only 18%. Further, each year an estimated 97acres of tree canopy is lost: At this rate, canopy will drop to 14% by 2040.

This data prompted Western Reserve Land Conservancy and key partner organizations to form the Cleveland Tree Coalition. Creating public awareness and mobilizing community action around the need for trees is critical to accomplishing the coalition’s goal of achieving a 30% tree canopy by 2040.

Western Reserve Land Conservancy’s Tree Steward Training Program is an educational program teaching participants about tree biology, planting, pruning, and community engagement to promote good stewardship and community engagement in the urban forest. The Tree Steward Training program also includes hands-on, outdoor workshops focused on tree pruning and maintenance, as well as a community tree planting in a low-canopy neighborhood of Cleveland. Our current goal is to train 40 new stewards each year, while offering ongoing training and events for all trained stewards year-round.

Our tree steward model has proven its success: over the past five years, more than 300 tree stewards have been trained in planting and maintaining trees. The Land Conservancy’s tree stewards have gone on to create neighborhood tree coalitions and organize plantings. Through this innovative and engaging program, we are empowering Northeast Ohio residents to make a difference in the urban forestry field through hands-on learning.

· Matthew Le, University of Wisconsin-Steven Point – Robert Felix Memorial Scholarship for $5,000

· Morgan Parent, University of Massachusetts-Amherst – Fran Ward Scholarship for $5,000

· Kim Farris-Manning, Collège La Cité – Robert Felix Memorial Scholarship for $5,000

· Kayla Stuart, University of Tennessee-Knoxville – John Wright Memorial Scholarship for $5,000

· Olivia Liebing, Iowa State – Bonnie Appleton Memorial Scholarship for $5,000

We are deeply grateful to the following people and organizations who contributed $2,500 or more to the TREE Fund in May 2022:

See the full list of lead donors who make our vital tree research and education work possible on our website.

The TREE Fund is proud to partner with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System to bring you free education offerings. We are now able to accommodate up to 3,000 participants!

Tuesday, Nov. 1 at noon (Central Time)

Andrew Millward, PhD, and Justin Miron, PhD student, Ryerson University

Tuesday, Dec. 6 at noon (Central Time)

Jason Gordon, PhD, University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc.

Missed a webinar? Watch it anytime on our website.

TREE Fund now offers ISA CEU credits for one recorded webinar: "Loading of a Tie-in Point While Climbing." If you missed this webinar, you can now watch the recording and earn ISA CEU credits by completing a 20 question quiz with 80% accuracy. Learn more on our website.

TREE Fund Crown Partners!