Yeah, Trees are now being "quantified" to justify their raison d'etre - here:
"In 2006, McPherson and his colleagues were adding Queens as a reference city when the New York Parks Department asked them to value all of New York City’s 592,000 street trees. With the advances made over the preceding dozen years, McPherson could deliver a far more sophisticated report than he had for Chicago. Energy savings: New York City’s trees annually saved roughly $28 million, or $47.63 per tree. Air pollution: Each street tree removed an average of 1.73 pounds of air pollutants per year (a benefit of $9.02 per tree), for a total of more than $5 million. The report also calculated that street trees reduced stormwater runoff by nearly 900 million gallons each year, saving the city $35.6 million it would have had to spend to improve its stormwater systems. The average street tree intercepted 1,432 gallons, a service worth $61, a figure large enough to impress cost-conscious city managers.
McPherson and his colleagues were also able to tally various benefits associated with aesthetics, increased property values and economic activity, reduced human stress, and improved public health, which were estimated at $52.5 million, or $90 a tree. These drew on straight-up economic studies of real estate prices as well as social science research, which showed, for example, that hospital patients who could see a tree out the window of their room were discharged a day earlier than those without such a view. Other studies showed that shopping destinations with trees had more customers than those that didn’t, and leafy public-housing projects experienced less violence than barren ones.
All these data led to the finding that each year New York City’s street trees delivered $122 million in benefits, or about $209 a tree. As New York City’s parks and forestry officials well knew, they received $8 million a year to plant and tend street trees, and spent another $6.3 million to pay personnel. The netbenefit they were getting for all these trees was an impressive $100 million.
For the first time, urban forestry science had a dramatic effect on public policy: In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg quadrupled the city’s forestry budget, from $8 million to $31 million (down last year to $27 million), when he launched Million Trees NYC, a partnership with entertainer Bette Midler’s nonprofit New York Restoration Project. McPherson was thrilled to see science elevate urban forestry above the level of “a kumbaya idea.” The million trees (350,000 are in the ground so far) planted by 2018 will transform the Big Apple, and those lush, tree-lined streets and shaded parks may well become Bloomberg’s most visible legacy."
"In 2006, McPherson and his colleagues were adding Queens as a reference city when the New York Parks Department asked them to value all of New York City’s 592,000 street trees. With the advances made over the preceding dozen years, McPherson could deliver a far more sophisticated report than he had for Chicago. Energy savings: New York City’s trees annually saved roughly $28 million, or $47.63 per tree. Air pollution: Each street tree removed an average of 1.73 pounds of air pollutants per year (a benefit of $9.02 per tree), for a total of more than $5 million. The report also calculated that street trees reduced stormwater runoff by nearly 900 million gallons each year, saving the city $35.6 million it would have had to spend to improve its stormwater systems. The average street tree intercepted 1,432 gallons, a service worth $61, a figure large enough to impress cost-conscious city managers.
McPherson and his colleagues were also able to tally various benefits associated with aesthetics, increased property values and economic activity, reduced human stress, and improved public health, which were estimated at $52.5 million, or $90 a tree. These drew on straight-up economic studies of real estate prices as well as social science research, which showed, for example, that hospital patients who could see a tree out the window of their room were discharged a day earlier than those without such a view. Other studies showed that shopping destinations with trees had more customers than those that didn’t, and leafy public-housing projects experienced less violence than barren ones.
All these data led to the finding that each year New York City’s street trees delivered $122 million in benefits, or about $209 a tree. As New York City’s parks and forestry officials well knew, they received $8 million a year to plant and tend street trees, and spent another $6.3 million to pay personnel. The netbenefit they were getting for all these trees was an impressive $100 million.
For the first time, urban forestry science had a dramatic effect on public policy: In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg quadrupled the city’s forestry budget, from $8 million to $31 million (down last year to $27 million), when he launched Million Trees NYC, a partnership with entertainer Bette Midler’s nonprofit New York Restoration Project. McPherson was thrilled to see science elevate urban forestry above the level of “a kumbaya idea.” The million trees (350,000 are in the ground so far) planted by 2018 will transform the Big Apple, and those lush, tree-lined streets and shaded parks may well become Bloomberg’s most visible legacy."
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