Today was a school days throwback – we went on a field trip. We took a tour of habitat creation projects on industrial sites around Baltimore’s “Second Harbor”. If you’re from out of town and have visited Baltimore to eat crabs, take in an Orioles game at Camden Yards, or visit the National Aquarium, you’ve…
Metropolitan Melting Heat Islands are normally the result of a built-up, urban area that is hotter than surrounding rural areas. Average annual air temperatures in cities of with 1 million people can be 1-5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than circumferential expanses, in the evenings that difference can be up to 22 degrees. Heat islands develop when urbanization spreads, once…
I had a pretty exciting Earth Day. I spent the morning on assignment for the US Forest Service Northern Research Station documenting installation of a treatment device that uses filters filled with tree bark to clean urban stormwater. The filter boxes were installed by the Parks and People Foundation under the guidance of their Green Infrastructure…
Days of Planet Past Up until the 1970s there was no EPA, no Clean Water Act nor a Clean Air Act. It was perfectly legal to unendingly spew toxic smoke into the air and dump pernicious waste into rivers and streams. But the tides were turning, a movement was growing that would force environmental issues…
Last week I was doing field work for a client and came across a large white oak. The tree was not in the limit of disturbance (it was about 40′ away), but the local ordinance called for it be called out in the report. The tree was very large (53″ in diameter) with an elliptical…
Our colleague Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne and his team at the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab presented on An Object-Based Approach to Statewide Land Cover Mapping at the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 2014 Conference in Louisville, KY. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed a bill in 2013 to keep Maryland at 40% tree canopy…
We just finished hosting the monthly call between researchers working in US Forest Service Research & Development Urban Research. As you can see from the link, these people spend a lot of time answering questions related to people + trees in cities. Sometimes when people think of the US Forest Service, they think of large…
Thanks to all those that attended today’s webinar on managing trees during construction. We talked about different reasons for managing trees during construction; we discussed the American National Standard for tree management during construction (ANSI A300 Part 5); and we reviewed some of the provisions of ANSI A300 Part 5. A key point is the…
Did you know that there are competitions for tree climbers? The International Society of Arboriculture has chapters all over the world. Those chapters hold tree climbing competitions where arborists compete to be the top climber in their chapter, and chapter competitors compete for the international crown. Today I attended the Mid-Atlantic Chapter, International Society of…
I had a great day today spending some time with Dr. Jason Grabosky’s (Rutgers) ecology class on a field tour in Washington, DC. Our first stop was a visit with entomologist Dr. Mike Raupp (University of Maryland) who talked to us about the importance of biodiversity and the need to maintain all trophic levels in…
