18. Forest Management Strategies – Communication
How to contract for an oak wilt survey, and pay for it with an Urban Forest Grant. A guide for
neighborhoods to learn where oak wilt symptomatic trees are located and strategies to reduce tree
canopy loss.
PART I:
1. Review the “Neighborhood Oak Wilt Survey” Request for Proposals (RFP) Template.
2. Share the RFP Template with community members and decide on the scope:
a. Do you want a contractor to look for oak wilt symptoms from the Right of Way or would
you like neighbors to give permission for a contractor to inspect private property?
b. Would you like to include other items in the inspection such as the location and
condition of ash trees?
c. Would you like to include adjacent properties such as a church, school, or other
property? If so invite them to the conversation.
3. Discuss the proposed scope of the project with Urban Forest Health Coordinator April Rose.
April can help refine RFP Template language and provide a map that the neighborhood will use
to obtain bids for work.
4. Solicit bids from contractors (if more than $3,000 get at least 3 bids).
PART II:
5. Fill out an Urban Forest Grant Application to apply for funding. The project category will be
“Urban Forest Stewardship” and the subcategory will include “mapping,” “disease control” and
“education.”
6. Consider including other items in your grant application. For example:
a. Bulk compost or mulch delivery for a community work day
b. Yard signs to remind people to water during drought, paint oak wounds, etc.
7. Share your draft with your neighborhood: get input on priorities and buy in from the people
who will be affected. Decide on community dates (neighborhood meetings to share results,
community workdays to plant and/or mulch trees.
8. Send your draft grant application to grant administrator Jason Traweek and April Rose. We will
review and discuss anything that needs clarification.
9. Submit Urban Forest Grant application.
10. Upon Urban Forest Grant approval, contract inspection work.
PART III:
11. Hire contractor, notify April Rose, City of Austin. April will share historic oak wilt data and door
hangers with contractor.
12. Determine inspection dates and any permission for access needs. Notify neighborhood of
planned inspection dates and rain dates.
13. Contractor performs field work, summarizes data and shares with neighborhood point of
contact and April Rose, City of Austin.
14. Upon receipt of complete data set, contractor invoices neighborhood.
15. Neighborhood pays contractor and submits receipt to Austin Community Foundation.
16. Austin Community Foundation pays neighborhood as per specification in the Urban Forest Grant
Application.
27. Managing the Forest, Not the Trees:
Adaptive Management for
Oak Wilt in Austin, Texas
A p r i l . R o s e @ a u s t i n t e x a s . g o v
Editor's Notes
Greetings!
I hope to have a few minutes at the end for dialogue. If we don’t connect here then please send me an email.
Here is our what we will cover:
The significance of oak trees in Austin
What is oak wilt
Historic management approach
Decision to pivot
What management strategies we are piloting.
Wondering if anyone has ever heard the expression everything is bigger in Texas?
Well, it is true. Our skies are big, our population is big, and the heat is big. And thankfully so are the live oak trees.
Oak trees, especially the live oak are really important to the historic and cultural identity of Texas, and especially Austin.
This is one of the many named live oak trees in Texas. This is the Sorin Oak found on the campus of St. Edward’s University.
http://www.landscapeonline.com/research/article-a.php?number=16758
These are the Kissing Oaks near San Marcos and the Treaty Oak in Austin.
Tied to our culture and history
And they are really important to me personally, and many others who enjoy climbing trees, sitting under them, and appreciating their quiet presence.
Not only important historically, culturally, socially - but provide significant ecosystem service values to Austin:
Urban FIA tells us that we have:
Live oaks Q. virginiana, Q fusiformis - comprise 8.4% of our tree canopy, 2.8M trees.
Red oaks Q. buckleyi, Q. shumardii - comprise 1.5% of our tree canopy, 462,000 trees.
Live oak are the third most common tree according to our Urban FIA
And have the second highest LAI. The leaf area index, the leaf surface area is part of why they are of major value to our community through their air quality, water quality, and heat island mitigation benefits.
Some of our most important environmental features (Colorado River, underground caves, freshwater springs, and aquifers) are dependent on our tree canopy.
Live oaks occur throughout Austin, but the endemic Q. fusiformis naturally occurs more frequently on the west side of Austin The virginiana is more widely planted throughout Austin.
This is important to the story because the impact of oak wilt is concentrated in West Austin, which is also where the wealth of Austin is concentrated.
A unique characteristic that contributes to oak wilt management regime is that they are frequently grafted through underground root connections. Trees up to 200 feet apart may be grafted together.
And this is what a typical west Austin neighborhood looks like. They are dominated by live oak.
Now you know a little about the importance of oak trees to Austin.
Lets dive into a very short oak wilt primer. This is the distribution in the United States.
This fungal disease was first identified in Wisconsin in 1944 and in Texas in Texas 1986. It is a primary pathogen – it can infect healthy oak trees.
The tree responds by trying to compartmentalize the fungus, which interrupts the flow of water. This rapid water loss causes leaf symptoms including veinal necrosis in live oak trees. If untreated it will usually kill a live oak in a year, and a red oak in a few weeks.
The disease can spread two ways: Underground through root graft connections…. Because trees up to 200’ apart may be connected.
The above ground spread is facilitated by the red oak.
This is an infection area. The disease will continue to spread through underground root connections as long as there is a host. Spread 75’ a year.
Treatments are available: trenching to interrupt root graft connections. And fungicide injections.
The Key to limiting canopy loss is communication and the timing of treatment.
Managing this disease in a neighborhood requires that people communicate with each other.
People need to look at the forest, and not their own individual trees to limit the impact.
What have we been doing?
When OW first identified there was limited expertise in the state and limited management tools.
X certified arborists.
Only a handful of people who could properly diagnose the disease.
Hammer – trenching.
Trenching was the primary method for attempting to restrict the spread.
Because oak trees are so important to the historic, cultural, social and environmental fabric of Austin,
20+ years ago The City of Austin hired an oak wilt suppression coordinator to help mitigate the impact of the disease.
They provided diagnostic support, community education and support to neighborhoods that wanted to organize trenching projects.
High touch service with limited impact. Not accounting for what is true now.
What was the level of impact? Limited to limited geographic area and one disease.
In 2018 there was a catalyst for change. The oak wilt coordinator retired and our city urban forester, Emily King changed the scope of the position to focus on increasing UF resilience.
Rather than oak wilt coordinator it became Forest Health Coordinator. She hired me… my job is to increase the resilience of Austin’s urban forest.
We zoomed way out and start Managing the Forest, not the Trees
Where do you start? Started looking at the oak wilt slice of our forest health program and asked ourselves (Incorporate Dan’s message of Now here)
What is the problem Now?
What are the resources available to the community Now? (a lot has changed since the program was developed in 1986)
What is a reasonable level of service? Can we sustain house calls? No – as you remember this disease spreads underground and requires a community approach.
What is the impact of the work we were providing? Too narrow. Not efficient use of limited staff resources.
Just because this is the way we have always done oak wilt, does not mean it is the best way to manage OW moving forward?
Based on our inventory of resources, the needs in the community today, and the impact of the approach - we decided the status quo was not going to help us accomplish our goal.
We wanted to try new strategies that would reduce our direct oak wilt services to individuals and instead providing a reasonable level of service to community groups that would include oak wilt and other forest health information.
Let’s explore some of the strategies:
This is the data from the house call model of service.
Over 2,000 inspection points. This is valuable. Looking at this data I know where oak wilt has been confirmed in Austin. And where there are gaps in the data.
We challenged assumptions that we were operating under about making this data public.
There was concern that the real estate community had expressed years ago that this data would negatively impact property values.
I scanned the landscape and could ID several data sets that did the same (crime, flood, wildfire)
I made the case that I want to make this data public – by increasing peoples awareness of where ow is, we could save more trees and help preserve property values.
I reached out to stakeholders (homebuilders, realtors, neighborhood associations, and our public information office) explaining how making this public could save tree canopy, and all stakeholder groups said – Yes, seems like a good idea.
Worked with our GIS analyst to convert our internal data set to a publicly viewable, interactive map that shows relative oak wilt risk.
Searchable by neighborhood name or street address.
Started a basic community awareness campaign around oak wilt. We want people to know that we have oak trees, and oak wilt is an area of concern.
This will include social media, radio ads, and targeted ads in high risk areas and resources for neighborhoods like yard signs and tree ribbons.
Started a basic community awareness campaign around oak wilt. We want people to know that we have oak trees, and oak wilt is an area of concern.
This will include social media, radio ads, and targeted ads in high risk areas and resources for neighborhoods like yard signs and tree ribbons.
Own your “areas for improvement”
I am not good at being concise. For communication pieces to be effective they need to be concise and appealing to read.
I asked people for help who had skills in content and graphic design.
We have to know and embrace our weaknesses and invite people or partners to your team that have that skill set.
Our City website does not need to be a clearinghouse of info.
We can provide our local information (like the map) and refer folks to this statewide web site maintained by the Texas A&M Forest Service.
To make this work for us, it was important to provide feedback on what was working well and what was missing.
To that end this section was added called ”community tools”. It includes resources that can be used by any neighborhood or governing body to help inform people about oak wilt.
When I do a neighborhood presentation I use the one found here, so people can easily find it later and they are one step away from the other info they will need. Such as how to get help.
Previous website has a get help section. Thanks to the Qualification developed by TFS & ISAT, people can find an OWQA to diagnose oak wilt and provide mgmt. recommendations.
Rather than providing diagnostic work myself, I refer people here to get help.
This was hard and I was a bit scared of this step.
When I first started telling people that called me for help, no: we don’t do house calls, call an OWQA. I thought I was going to get a lot of pushback.
I explained to people:
that this is something that the private sector does and we should not be competing with the private sector.
If they organize a neighborhood meeting or block walk I would come (manage forest not trees).
Allows us to focus energy on urban forest stressors that impact whole city not just central and west Austin
People got it. I’ve had people who were disappointed but felt that it was reasonable and justified.
Who do you think really loves it? The private sector!
Another strategy we have applied involves a tool developed by ESRI called Survey 123. This allows a user to quickly submit data and it has the look and feel of a google form.
I didn’t want to abandon our monitoring efforts, I’d still like to know where sick trees are being found so that we can support neighborhood efforts to manage the disease.
We imagined that Arborists using this tool to report OW when they find it in the field.
When we started this change I had a stakeholder meeting with a bunch of OWQA to explain the change in our level of service, and to ask them for their help with reporting oak wilt.
They were pretty on board with the idea that I would be referring diagnosis to them.
And agreed to try out this tool. But one year later I have had one submission. Bottoms line – no incentive.
Final strategy that we are employing is to connect resources. A neighborhood groups can apply for an urban forest grant to pay a qualified arborist to perform an oak wilt assessment.
We provide draft scope of work that neighborhoods can adapt for additional areas of interest.
Final strategy that we are employing is to connect resources. A neighborhood groups can apply for an urban forest grant to pay a qualified arborist to perform an oak wilt assessment.
We can leverage the private sector expertise, provide template language for the scope of work so that the work that is done is consistent, and pay for the work with our grant. Neighborhood gets the data, property owners get notified when they should consider taking action, and we get it too and use it to update infection area map.
We can leverage the private sector expertise, provide template language for the scope of work so that the work that is done is consistent, and pay for the work with our grant. Neighborhood gets the data, property owners get notified when they should consider taking action, and we get it too and use it to update infection area map.
Key Takeaways.
When a program has been in operation it wears a groove, like a record or a rut.
When you are deep in it, you may not be able to peek up over the edge. But to manage the forest, and not the trees you have to peek out of that rut and ask yourself:
What Assumptions do you operate under? Are they still true?
Is the impact of your effort balanced? Another way to ask that is: what is the return on your investment?
What small or big tweaks can you make? Don’t be afraid to alter course and iterate on the process.
Our hearty discussions around reasonable level of service helped us embrace these changes. And by doing so we will increase bandwidth to focus on forest resilience.
Thank you for your attention. I think we have time for a couple of questions.
