Sustainable Saratoga Monthly Meetings

The February Community Meeting on Tuesday Feb 28th  from 7 – 9 pm will be our Kick- Off meeting for 2012. We are  holding113  it at the Empire State College building on West Ave, room 143 – our favorite venue.

We will introduce our local partners and supporters from the community and showcase the initiatives we will be working on with them in 2012.

We are also looking to strengthen our volunteer base so look for future e-newsletters announcing this event to see where your efforts will have the most affect in the areas of your personal passion in sustainability.

Our next Community  Meeting will be March 27, 2012.

 

CALL TO ACTION     Volunteer Recruitment for the Saratoga Tree Survey

The Project

In 2008, the City (encouraged by Sustainable Saratoga) applied for and received a $20,000 Urban Forestry grant from DEC.  The grant provides funding to the City for the principal purpose of developing a Master Plan for the City’s trees  (specifically, the street and park trees under City responsibility).   In order to develop the most informed plan, the grant required the City to conduct the first-ever comprehensive inventory of the City’s street trees and to analyze the economic, aesthetic, and environmental  benefits provided by the City’s trees.  Sustainable Saratoga offered to provide volunteer labor and expertise to conduct the inventory and analysis that would underpin the City’s master tree plan.  DEC and the City agreed that our citizen effort could serve as in-kind funding to fulfill the City’s obligation to provide $20,000 in matching funds, saving taxpayer dollars.

 

Need for Volunteers:

As 2012 dawns, it is crunch time for the DEC Urban Forestry grant to the City, in which Sustainable Saratoga is a crucial partner.   Three years of dedicated work by many people lie behind us, but now the August 19, 2012 deadline for the grant looms.  In order to have time to analyze data and allow time for the City to develop a tree plan by the grant deadline, we need to complete the actual tree survey by mid-May.  We need your help as a volunteer for the survey.

We are looking for an elite corps of committed, responsible, self-starting volunteers who are eager to learn more about trees and the condition of Saratoga’s urban forest.  These volunteers would collect data of tree location, size, and condition to feed into the on-the-ground survey of the City’s street-scape.  Although we would welcome any help, our ideal volunteer would be one who is willing to commit about 10 hours to the project, mostly between the leaf-out (late April) and late May.   Although the surveying can be done by an individual working alone, volunteers will probably find it easier and more enjoyable if they recruit a friend or family member to walk the streets during data collection.

 

How you will help if you volunteer with the survey:

  • First, you do not need to be a tree expert to help with this. You will be given as much advance training, detailed instructions, and ongoing support as you feel you need. If you run into any difficulties or have questions (including being stumped by a specific tree identification), feel free to call in for follow-up support. We will be there for you.
  • You will be provided with a GPS unit, a tree guide (tailored to the most common Saratoga trees), survey instructions, and survey forms.
  • You will be assigned a list of “street segments” to survey.  For example, you might be assigned the street segment ofNelson Avefrom Union toLake.  Each volunteer’s list will include the number of street segments that we estimate will take about ten hours.
  • You will walk each street segment, record the survey data on the form, and report it back to Sustainable Saratoga.  You may do as many street segments as you want (and we hope you will do several, or even many), but one complete street segment will be the smallest unit a volunteer can survey and report.  Gradually, all the street segments will be aggregated into the comprehensive tree survey.
  • Our goal is to have this surveying done by sometime around May 20.
  • Although final tree identification cannot be done until they leaf out in April, you might prefer to begin surveying sooner, to spread out your time commitment.  This approach would involve two passes along each street segment: on the first pass (before leaf-out) , you could get location, size information, etc. while on the second (after leaf-out), you could do tree identification and condition.   If it suits your schedule or temperament better, you could just wait for leaf-out and then pounce on your list of street segments, doing them in a single pass.

 

If you want to volunteer, contact Tom Denny (587-6108 or tomdenny2010@gmail.com) or saratogatreesurvey@gmail.com.