:: Urban Forest Economic Value::

While social and psychological benefits of the urban forest are quite difficult to capture in economic terms, a great deal of headway has been made in quantifying the value of the urban forest's environmental benefits. By cleansing the air, retaining runoff, and sequestering CO2, urban trees provide valuable services that society would otherwise have to pay for. To provide an example, if the trees on a development sequester X gallons of water a year, then their dollar worth might be expressed as the amount a retention basin (to sequester the same X gallons of water) would cost (if the trees were not present). Of course, this would only be part of their value-- we could also consider the savings in health care costs associated with the pollution they sequester from the air, and so forth.

Capturing the value of the urban forest in dollar terms is a useful way to communicate the importance of the urban forest to other sectors of society. It also allows the urban forest to be integrated in economic calculations (cost-benefit in particular) related to city planning and development, where it might otherwise be overlooked.