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Lake Absarraca
Photo: Cheyenne Urban Forestry
Mission
and Scope of Work - Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division
VISION:
Every feasible planting space in Cheyenne
occupied by a suitable and thriving tree of good health and
safe structure.
MISSION:
Dedicated to improving the urban forest by: Working
with citizens, businesses, government agencies and tree care
professionals in maintaining and renewing a safe, healthy, and
diverse mature tree canopy to enhance the beauty and prosperity
of the community.
Our
Definition of an Urban Forest: The relationship of all trees
and woody shrubs existing, alive or dead, within an area developed,
lived in, worked in, and managed, by people.
SCOPE
OF FORESTRY DIVISION'S MISSION:
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Providing educational opportunities and information
to citizens and professional tree care personnel.
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Leading by example in tree planting, and overall tree care
on city owned and maintained lands.
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Through research and experimentation plant a wide variety
of tree species that are able to grow in this planting zone.
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Working with architects, planners, developers, governing
body, business owners, and citizens to design and incorporate ideal
tree planting
locations and species along new and existing city streets.
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Minimize public right-of-way safety concerns caused by trees
and shrubs.
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Monitor
tree mortality causing insect and disease threats with inspection,
action, and follow-up.
GOALS
FOR TREES IN CITY MAINTAINED AREAS:
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Perform a whole system tree
evaluation to determine: the different tree species
and percent of whole, health, safety, insect and disease problems,
and available planting spaces. Update evaluation with follow-up
inspections. (Overall tree evaluation
Completed 2004, Follow-up is Ongoing)
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Attain a tree replacement to removal ratio of 5 to 1. (Ongoing
goal)
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Attain an overall tree species mix not to exceed 10% of
total for any one species. (Ongoing
process that will take many years)
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Determine the best watering and fertilizing regime for each
species and area to attain the best tree health without
application of pesticides. (Ongoing)
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Research and develop maintenance methods to maximize tree
growth and longevity for this area. (Ongoing)
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Reduce
the use of treated water for watering trees. The Board
of Public Utilities (water department) has installed
pipe for reuse water delivery to some park areas, cemeteries,
some athletic fields, and a golf course. The line went into
service Summer of 2007. We also draft untreated water out
of Lake Absarraca.
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Restore
and maintain living tree and shrub specimens at the High
Plains Arboretum. The City of Cheyenne assumed maintenance
of the historic Arboretum at the USDA
Agricultural Research Service - High Plains Grasslands Research
Station west of F.E. Warren Air Base, on July 1,
2008. The City Forestry Division along with the Cheyenne
Botanic Gardens Division, Cheyenne Parks Division, and other
city departments, maintain this 137 acre Arboretum, Reservoir,
and Park area. More information on the arboretum is on the
Cheyenne
Botanic Gardens Website.
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Find
ways to keep beetle infested trees, removed commercially
and privately, out of the landfill. The
compost facility is able to chip logs up to 17 inches in
diameter and cut into sections 4 to 5 feet long. The forestry
division peels the bark off of larger diameter tree trunks
using a chainsaw powered bark peeler. Peeled logs are sold
to the highest bidder.
In 2009, large tree trunk sections were being stored at
the Cheyenne Landfill to be chipped and spread on the top
of the landfill debris to act as a top coating.
2009 Annual Report - Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division
The Urban Forestry Division is responsible
for the development and maintenance of trees, shrubs, vines,
and hedges, on all City of Cheyenne public properties. Tree
and shrub maintenance on street, alley and public sidewalk right-of-ways
is the responsibility of the abutting homeowner or business.
However, the property owner must consult with the City Forester
and acquire a permit before any right-of-way tree trimming,
planting, or removal is conducted.
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Forestry Personnel: The forestry division
consists of seven full-time employees, down from nine employees,
due to a reduction-in-force layoff in March 2010. Six
of the full-time forestry division professionals and arborists
are International
Society of Arboriculture - Certified Arborists. The
five arborists (four are Certified Arborists, one in training),
are primarily the employees doing the hands-on tree work in
the areas maintained by the city.
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Cheyenne's Trees: The Forestry Division maintains over 13,800
trees in city parks, golf courses, cemeteries, ball fields,
including more than 850 trees found along the Greenway. There
are over 3100 trees that require hand watering, trees that are
not located in automated irrigation areas. Included in the 3100
hand-watered trees total, there are 1200 evergreen trees that
require hand watering in winter during dry spells.
The City of Cheyenne assumed maintenance responsibility for
137 acres of land including the High
Plains Arboretum (a living tree museum), a reservoir,
and adjacent park area, all formerly a part of the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service
- High Plains Grasslands Research Station. The Research Station
is located on the west side of F.E. Warren Air Force Base off
of Roundtop Road. The 62 acre High Plains Arboretum area has
many tree species that were planted from the late 1920's through
the mid 1970's as part of woody vegetation research for the
High Plains. The 62 acre arboretum area and several hundred
trees are now under the maintenance of the City of Cheyenne
Parks and Recreation Department as well as several hundred other
trees around the reservoir and the adjacent park area.
• 2009 Awards:
- Cheyenne
has achieved "Tree City USA" by the National
Arbor Day Foundation for 27
consecutive years. Cheyenne is the oldest Tree City
USA community
in Wyoming.
- Cheyenne
met the requirements for forestry program growth with the Tree
City USA Growth Award by holding a Tree Risk Assessment
and Policy Workshop
on September 29, 2009, in Lions Park. Forty tree care
professionals from primarily Wyoming attended the workshop.
One third of the workshop
was held outside actually inspecting trees. Other project growth
elements are defined below in Project Partnerships.
• Project
Partnerships:
- Partnership with the Cheyenne
Community Forestry Committee, and the Cottonwood Society to
plant cottonwood trees in the Nationway median
between Logan Avenue and Ridge Road..
- Partnership
with Cheyenne Light, Fuel, & Power Company to plant trees
at the new St. Mary's School under their "Power of Trees"
program
- Partnership
with East High School in their Mentoring Program.
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Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division met with
Laramie County Emergency Management Agency and Cheyenne Public
Works to confirm level of response
for any public emergency that would involve trees, or tree debris
cleanup, or other needs utilizing forestry equipment and personnel.
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Right-of-way Tree Inspections: The Urban Forestry Division
inspects trees along the public right-of-ways (i.e., streets,
alleys, and sidewalks), and notifies property owners about vegetative
concerns that are compromising the safe use of the public right-of-ways.
In 2009, 417 code violation notices were sent to
property owners regarding visibility obstructions, tree and
shrub limbs growing into public right-of-way use areas (i.e.,
streets, sidewalks, and alleys), tree mortality causing insect
infestations, and private property trees and shrubs posing a
danger to the safe use of the public right-of-ways. Ordinance
info.
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Landscape Plan Review:
The forestry division reviews landscape plans for new
commercial development and change-of-use or expansion-of-use
for commercial properties inside city limits. In 2009
we reviewed 59 site plans compared to 99 in 2008, 113 plans
reviewed in 2007, 79 plans reviewed in 2006, 71 plans
in 2005, 58 plans in 2004, and 46 plans in 2003.
The Cheyenne Development Office oversees the landscape
portion of the zoning ordinance which develops and regulates
requirements for commercial development. The landscaping
requirements for development are found in the zoning section,
Chapter 17, of the city
code.
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Education: In 2009, 228 students from St. Mary's
School, and Deming, Anderson, Jessup, Alta Vista, and Willardson
Elementary Schools participated in a Spring Tree Jamboree in
Lions Park. In addition, over 60 elementary, home-school,
and private school students, parents, and teachers participated
in guided Lions Park tree walks, which included the use of the
Nature Center and the Tree
House.
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Citizen Assistance: Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division receives
over 1100 calls per year with citizens asking questions
about their personal trees. Cheyenne Forestry personnel inspected
140 private properties, upon the request of the property
owner, regarding tree problems. The number of private property
inspections concerning tree problems has decreased over the
years due to a higher number of citizens using this Website
to answer their questions about their tree problems.
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Website: This Website, updated by the Cheyenne Urban Forestry
Division, had 77,811 visits in 2009 and 61,890 visits
in 2008. A few site visitors, six in 2009, from all over
the US, have sent e-mail questions about tree problems, sometimes
photos of tree problems are included with the e-mail.
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Commercial Arborists: The Urban Forestry Division is responsible
for licensing and regulating the work of commercial arborists
and pesticide applicators within the City of Cheyenne. Current
list of licensed arborists.
• Cheyenne Service Request Program: The City of Cheyenne
has an Internet based citizen Service
Request program. Via the Internet, this program allows
citizens to voice their concerns and point out problems to City
of Cheyenne employees. In 2009 the Forestry Division received
16 requests from citizens to help solve a tree or shrub
related problem.
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Youth Alternatives: The Cheyenne
Urban Forestry Division works with Cheyenne
Youth Alternatives in assisting youth in need of community
service. Each year, several youth work with the forestry division
crew in helping our trees grow.
2009 Summary of Tree Maintenance
(Parks,
golf courses, cemeteries, High Plains Arboretum, city buildings,
other city property)
- Trees
Removed: 343
Trees are removed due to: dead, bark beetle
attack, decay, wind damage, winter desiccation, drought,
disease, lightning, vehicle damage, and vandalism.
In 2009, 10% of the removals were trees that had been killed
by bark beetles. Drought stressed trees are an easy
target for insects and disease, which can be the final cause
in killing the trees. Ips
bark beetle, and Mountain
Pine Beetle, are very small insects, which in high
numbers, attacked and killed 34 large spruce trees
and pine trees. Forestry removes the bark off of beetle
killed pine and spruce trees, prior to storing the trunks.
We use two chain saw powered bark peelers to remove the
bark. Bark removal is required to keep the bark beetles
from emerging out of infested trees and attacking other
living trees.
The
number of trees removed that were smaller than or equal
to 10 inches in diameter was 195 or 57% of total. The number
of trees larger than 10 inches in diameter that were removed
was 148 or 43%. Most of these trees were removed from the
High Plains Arboretum, because they had died or were no
longer vigorous enough to keep up with the die-back.
Tree trunks and limbs generated from tree removal or pruning,
done by City Forestry in 2009, typically does not go into
the city landfill or is shipped to any other landfills.
However, in 2009, many large trunk sections are being
stored at the Cheyenne landfill to be ground up into chips
to be used as a top covering on the landfill debris.
- Trees
Pruned: 2,634
Larger park trees are generally pruned
in the dormant season, November through March. Smaller
trees are pruned year-round. Many smaller trees in
unirrigated areas are pruned while they are being hand-watered
during the summer months.
Pruning small trees (trees with a trunk diameter of 5 inches
or less), 76% of the 2,634 total number in 2008, allows
us to direct the growth of the tree as it matures. We
remove small poorly positioned branches, which affect the
growth of more desirable branches. Tree care industry
guidelines recommend pruning every other year on newly planted
trees beginning a year after planting and continuing for
six years. Pruning in larger trees primarily removes
dead, broken, or weak branches. Squirrels feeding
on the high food value layers of cells under the bark in
smaller branches causes significant die-back in many larger
trees. Smaller limb die-back, if severe enough, causes
larger limb die-back. We have had to remove many large
trees due to repetitive and heavy squirrel damage. Squirrels
can kill trees!
- Trees
Planted: 332
New trees purchased and planted - 307
Trees transplanted from city maintained tree nurseries -
25
Over 300 trees exist in various tree nurseries and
are maintained by this division. As the trees mature,
they are transplanted into the parks, golf courses,
ballfields, cemeteries, and the Greenway using a 44-inch
diameter, trailer mounted, hydraulic tree spade.
- Trees
Damaged: 3 (Damage
caused by humans - vandalism and vehicle damage)
Using an internationally recognized formula
to determine tree value, the dollar value of trees vandalized
or damaged by vehicles that required removal was $600.
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Tree
Watering Events: 7,347 (Each
time a tree is watered during the year equals one tree
watering event)
Calendar Year 2009 was a wetter than normal year with
3.24" of precipitation above
normal. Calendar year 2008 was a near
normal precipitation year at .19
inches below normal. Calendar year 2007,
was also a near normal precipitation year, .61
inches below normal. A normal year is 15.45
inches of precipitation.
Three consecutive years of near normal and above normal
precipitation certainly benefits all plants. Snowfall
so far for the 2009-2010 winter season is 28.5
inches above normal. Snowfall was 17
inches below normal for the 2007-2008 winter season. The
2008-2009 winter season finished at 9
inches above normal snowfall. Lower snowfall amounts
along with near normal precipitation amounts indicates
higher rainfall amounts during the growing season. Large
amounts of rainfall in a short period of time will have
a high percentage of water runoff that does not soak into
the soil.
Trees watered by hand are mainly located in non-irrigated
areas, including the Greenway, North Cheyenne Community
Park, Downtown core area, and parts of Lions Park.
All conifer trees (e.g., pine, spruce, fir and
juniper) require supplemental hand watering water during
the late fall and winter. The amount of water used
in 2009 for hand watering trees was .86 acre feet
or 280,563 gallons. An acre foot of water
is the amount of water needed to cover one acre (43,560
square feet) to a depth of one foot of water, 325,851
gallons. Most of the water used to water the trees,
80%, was taken out of Absarraca Lake, which is untreated
water, also known as raw water. We recycled 14,000
gallons of de-chlorinated water out of Johnson Pool at
the end of summer.
Drafting water out of Absarraca
Lake into a 350-gallon water tank, for hand watering trees.
The tank is hauled in the bed of a one-ton pickup
truck or dump truck. Nine trees can be watered with
each full tank of water. Depending on the distance
from the lake to the trees, 6
to 10 tanks of water can be filled each day, watering
54 to 90 trees per day per vehicle. We have 6 tanks,
350 gallons each, for hauling water. We also have
a 4500 gallon tanker that we use to flood irrigate trees
and to water 500+ trees in the Downtown Development Authority
(DDA) area. The tanker is also used as a "reservoir
on wheels" to supply water for several 350 gallon/pickup
truck units working in the same area.
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Special
Projects:
Landscaping,
and other city projects - 1160 personnel hours.
- Holliday Park
Gazebo: landscape design and installation of tree and
shrub beds.
- Southwest Cheyenne Corner Stone: landscape design
and installation.
- Tree and larger shrub planting at Paul
Smith Children's Village with Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.
- Tree Planting at Cheyenne Street & Alley's
shop building at 110 Cleveland Ave.
- Installed some landscape vegetation along Henderson
Ditch a new section of the Greenway at Baldwin Ct. south
of College Avenue.
- Planted
trees at the new Gunslingers facility on W. 15th St.
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Planted donated trees at Western Hills Park.
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Assisted with Parks And
Recreation Department's Superday and Goblin Walk events.
Chart
of Forestry Division Crew Activities (partial) 2001 - 2009
- Park
Tree Inventory and Evaluation
A good informational Website on the value of trees is: Colorado
Tree Coalition.
Tree
Maintenance Photos
Ips bark beetles and
drought led to the removal of this spruce tree in
the cemetery.
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44-inch diameter hydraulic
tree spade in position
to plant a tree.
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Using
a crane to place a larger blue spruce in the Depot Plaza
Most of our tree pruning is
done during the late fall and winter months for the following
reasons:
- We can drive large maintenance vehicles on the frozen soil
with little damage to the grass and soil.
- There is less chance of spreading tree diseases during the
winter months.
- There is less chance of insects being attracted to the pruning
wounds.
- Without leaves the overall structure of the tree and problem
limbs are easily seen.
- It is safer to do tree maintenance with fewer park visitors.
Initial
tree decline is usually due to drought or root damage, culminating
in the final blow of insect or disease attack causing tree
mortality. Trees left standing in poor health are open
to insect attack, which increases the chance of mortality
causing insects increasing in population. In mass, insects
can successfully attack healthy trees. Spruce Ips bark
beetles typically cause tree mortality beginning at the top
of the tree and moving downward. All spruce trees in
the cemeteries were sprayed in late Summer 2006, Spring 2007,
Spring 2008 and will be sprayed again in Spring 2009.
Fast growing
trees, such as cottonwoods, silver maples, boxelders, willows,
and Siberian elms, usually equate to weak-wooded trees. The
life expectancy of these fast growing trees is usually 40 to
80 years in an urban setting. Weak-wooded trees are more susceptible
to wood decay than most other slower growing trees. Wood decay
can cause a tree to be hazardous. Wind, snow load, or even water
saturation from rain can cause a decaying limb with or an entire
tree with decay to structurally fail. Frequently, there is no
outward indication of interior wood decay. If outward indications
of wood decay are present, the extent of the decay and how it
affects the structure of the tree is unknown. Sometimes decay
and structurally weakening is fairly obvious such as in the
cottonwood tree below. The photos below are before and after
pictures of a cottonwood tree that was removed in Holliday Park
in January of 1998.
Cheyenne
Community Forestry Committee
The Cheyenne
Community Forestry Committee (CCFC) was formed in January
2007. A resolution authorizing creation of the Cheyenne Community
Forestry Committee (resolution #4932) was signed by Mayor
Jack Spiker on April 9, 2007.
See a copy of the By-Laws.
The
mission statement of the Committee is:
"The Community Forestry Committee recognizes that trees
are vital to the health and well-being of our community. The
Committee is dedicated to the preservation, protection, and
enhancement of our community forest through professional efforts
in planning, planting and the maintenance of trees for the
enrichment of our residents and future generations to come.
The Committee will strive to build an effective and positive
partnership among citizens, industry, local government, schools
and volunteers."
Drought and Trees
brochure developed by the CCFC
The Committee
members are:
Don Bainter
Clint Bassett - Vice Chairperson
Jim Cochran
Salli Halpern
Jim Lambert - Secretary
Jeff Marsolek
Diane McKillip
Robert Means
Steve Roseberry - Chairperson
Lisa Olson
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