Learning to inventory East Rockaway trees

Cornell University has chosen East Rockaway in Nassau County to train students in doing a village-wide street tree inventory. On Saturday, August 7 and Sunday August 8, five teams, headed by Professor Nina Bassuk of the Cornell University Urban Horticulture Institute, will be collecting data on village street trees. Other members of the teams will be local high school and Girl Scout youth and members of the Village Tree Advisory Board.

Urban trees provide important benefits to the approximately 80 percent of the U.S. population living in urban areas. These benefits may be threatened if urban trees are not adaptable to climate change. Research is therefore needed to identify tree species more tolerant of the hotter and drier conditions likely to occur in the future.

As part of a research proposal to identify climate change tolerant urban tree species, students will be trained in three New York State counties — Dutchess, Jefferson, and Nassau — to collect data on community street trees. This training will be based on methods developed by Cornell SWAT (Student Weekend Arborist Team) which has conducted twenty-seven street tree inventories in New York State since 2002. Students will not only learn the nuts and bolts of street tree data collection, including identifying tree species and using handheld computers (PDAs) and Global Positioning System (GPS) units, but they will also provide a valuable service to their communities.

So on that weekend, if you see teams of students scouring the village and looking at trees and their PDA’s or GPS, not to fear — Cornell is helping us ‘go green.’

For more information, call the Chairman of the Village Tree Advisory Board, Bob Sympson at (516) 887-9094.