Author(s)

Sally Ross¹, Sharon Jean-Philippe², Wayne Clatterbuck², Neil Giffen³, Jamie Herold³, John Zobel⁴

¹School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
²Department of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
³Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
⁴University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the largest and most diverse energy, research, and development institution within the Department of Energy (DOE) system in the United States. As such, the site endures constant land development that creates rigorous growing conditions for urban vegetation. Natural resource managers at ORNL recognize that trees are an integral component of the landscape and are interested in characterizing the urban forest and their associated ecosystem services benefits. We evaluated the urban forest structure, quantified ecosystem services and benefits, and estimated economic value of resources using i-Tree Eco at ORNL. While this assessment captured over 1100 landscape trees, the ORNL Natural Resources Management for landscape vegetation can be expanded to include unmanaged landscapes, e.g. riparian areas, greenspace, and other vegetative attributes to increase ecosystem services benefits. Assigning a monetary value to urban forest benefits help to inform decisions about urban forest management, ideally on cost-benefit analysis.

Urban Tree(s), Urban Forest, Urban Vegetation, Landscape Vegetation, Tree Inventory, Tree Assessment, Ecosystem Service(s), Ecological Function, i-Tree Eco, Economic Valuation

Ross, S. , Jean-Philippe, S. , Clatterbuck, W. , Giffen, N. , Herold, J. and Zobel, J. (2020) i-Tree Eco Analysis of Landscape Vegetation on Remediated Areas of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Open Journal of Forestry, 10, 412-427. doi: 10.4236/ojf.2020.104026.