Green Horizons

How much is a single tree worth to a community? In some cases, more than $70,000, local experts say.

In honor of Arbor Day, "tree tags," price tags that quantify in dollars the benefits of trees, temporarily adorned some of Greater Kansas City’s trees. One hundred tags were placed around the Greater Kansas City metro area as communities celebrated Arbor Day. Missouri’s Arbor Day was April 4; Kansas’ Arbor Day was April 25.

The purpose of the tree price tag project was to make people aware of the many benefits that trees provide to cities in terms of stormwater reduction, improved air quality, higher real estate values (and property tax receipts), carbon storage, and energy savings. The tree tags show a dollar value for the services provided by that tree over its projected lifetime. While trees are beautiful, they are also a vital part of the metro’s infrastructure, providing many benefits. They need maintenance and care. This is not a nice extra in city budgets; it is vital maintenance that actually saves cities money in the long run. Trees don’t cost us money - trees pay us back many times over.

The dollar amounts attached to each tree were based on its estimated returns to the community, including reducing stormwater runoff, improving air quality, raising real estate values and more. The amounts were calculated by the unique life span, species and condition of each tree. Some of the heftier price tags include burr oaks in several locations across the region that will provide benefits worth well over $50,000 per tree. The majority of the values ranged from $1,000 to $30,000.

Tall-growing shade trees such as oaks, maples, gingko, baldcypress and others provide many more benefits than short growing trees such as the crabapples, pears and redbuds. This is for two reasons: the taller trees have more impact on the environment with more shade, more carbon stored, and more leaf and root area to hold stormwater. The shade trees also tend to live much longer than smaller trees - 70- 200+ years when cared for vs. 30 years for the smaller trees.

The tags were installed in Kansas City, Mo.; Gladstone, Mo.; Liberty, Mo.; Overland Park, Kan.; Westwood, Kan.; Olathe, Kan.; Mission, Kan.; and Wyandotte County, Kan. More information, along with a complete list of where the tags can be found, is available online at www.heartlandtreealliance. org

Here’s more information about the value of the trees in the Kansas City metro area:

• The city of Kansas City, Missouri’s 415,000 trees inventoried return $51 million in benefits annually to the city, which is $123 per tree per year.
• The city of Westwood’s 1,915 trees inventoried return $274,410 in benefits annually to the city, which is $143 per tree per year.
• The city of Liberty, Missouri’s 741 trees inventoried return $52,374 in benefits annually to the city, which is $70 per tree per year. Liberty’s tree value is lower than other cities because many of the trees were damaged by a tornado.
• The city of North Kansas City’s 1,808 trees inventoried return $345,441 in benefits annually to the city, which is $191 per tree per year.

Coordinating partners of the effort include the Mid- America Regional Council, Heartland Tree Alliance, Kansas Forest Service, Missouri Department of Conservation and Arborist Bob Haines.

Additional information on the benefits of trees can be found at: TreeLink: www.treelink.org; Louisiana Public Broadcasting: www.lpb.org/programs/forest/chicago. html; National Arbor Day Foundation: www.arborday. org