St. Catherine University Community Urban Woodland
Campus Tree Benefits
For more than 100 years, St. Catherine University has been blessed with one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation.
Trees can be found in all corners of the campus, providing a myriad of environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Trees are a valuable asset to St. Catherine University and the surrounding community, providing numerous benefits to students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Some of these benefits include:
- Improved air quality on campus. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and other pollutants from the air and release oxygen. This can lead to a healthier environment for students, faculty, and staff, as well as the surrounding community. Moreover, trees can help reduce the effects of urban heat islands, which can make cities and campuses hotter than the surrounding rural areas, by shading buildings and walkways, and through the process of transpiration.
- Enhanced aesthetic appeal of the campus. Trees provide a beautiful backdrop for buildings and open spaces, creating a more inviting and welcoming atmosphere. Trees can also help to reduce noise pollution and improve the acoustics on campus. The rustling of leaves and the sounds of birds can create a peaceful environment that is conducive to learning and relaxation.
- Improved habitat for wildlife. Trees provide food, shelter, and nesting sites for a wide range of species, including birds, insects, and mammals. This can help to maintain biodiversity on campus and promote ecological sustainability.
However, trees are not without threats and stress.
Climate change, invasive pests, and disease are key threats to urban trees, among others. Rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increased frequency and severity of storms can negatively impact our trees in the short and long term. Without management intervention, trees may fall into a mortality spiral, as conceptualized to the right.
St. Catherine University partners with SavATree to invest in maximizing the benefits of campus trees while minimizing tree stress.
One tool that is used to help manage St Kate's campus trees is a tree inventory map (below) to track location, species, size, condition, risk, management recommendations, and other important tree attributes over time.
Use the +/- buttons to zoom in or click on a tree point to interact with the map!
St Kate's Tree Inventory Map
Another tool used is i-Tree Eco which is a part of the software suite developed by the USDA Forest Service that provides urban and rural forestry benefits and assessment tools. These tools strengthen forest management and advocacy efforts by quantifying forest structure and the environmental benefits that trees provide.
Using the campus tree inventory, an i-Tree Eco Analysis was performed in early 2023 to quantify some of the environmental benefits provided by campus trees.
Data from 1,151 trees located on campus were analyzed and combined with local hourly air pollution and meteorological data to provide estimates:
Annual Functional Values
- Pollution removal - $6,240/year (873.1 pounds/year)
- Carbon sequestration - $2,270/year (13.29 tons)
- Avoided runoff - $2,750/year (307,300 gallons/year)
- Oxygen production - 35.44 tons/year (relatively insignificant due to large amount of oxygen already in the atmosphere)
- Total Annual Functional Value: $11,260/year
Replacement Values
Replacement value is the value of a tree based on the physical resource itself (e.g., the cost of having to replace a tree with a similar tree).
- Carbon storage - $195,000 (1.143 thousand tons)
- Replacement values - $1,960,000
