:: Development ::

By the late 1990s, two pieces of software had been developed that for the first time combined the body of research on the urban forest's function and value. Through these computer based model, the managers, city governments, and the public were given a tool with which to make calculations on a local or regional urban forest. The following briefly relates the development of each.

The Urban Forests Effects Model (UFORE)

UFORE is an acronym for Urban Forest Effects (model). UFORE was developed over the course of the late 1990s by researchers in the National Forest Service's (NFS) Northeastern Research Station (Urban Forests, Human Health, and Environmental Quality division). The effort was led by Dr. David Nowak, drawing on peer-reviewed research conducted on urban forests over the course of several decades, as well as his work in the Chicago Urban Forest Climate Project. For the first several years of its existence, UFORE was available to the public only as a SAS based prototype overseen by the NFS. As of 2006, a portion of the prototype has been recoded into a Windows/GIS based version (UFORE v 1.0). The work has been funded by the USDA Forest Service Northeastern Research Station, USDA State and Private Forestry's Urban and Community Forestry Program and the USDA National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council. It is in the public domain and free to any interested parties.

CITYgreen

American Forests is U.S.'s oldest non-profit citizens conservation group. Since 1875, the organization has been active in advocating for the protection of the Nation's forests and promoting citizen action in local forest and ecosystem protection. To serve this goal, the organization has involved itself (primarily) in developing useful, science based tools to support community conservation efforts. CITYgreen v 1.0 was released in 1996 , and represented the first user friendly and widely accessible software for calculations on urban forest services and value. The application runs as a GIS extension in ArcGIS*. The underlying models for both versions was developed in partnership with UFORE/Forest Service**, National Resources Conservation Service, and Purdue University researchers. Unlike UFORE, CITYgreen is sold on a sliding scale basis.

*The new CITYgreen for ArcGIS is not the focus of this project, but it is worth noting that it is quite different than its predecessor (5.0)-- requires no field data collection, can run an analysis over an entire region without using sample sites. It is far more user friendly and accessible to anyone with GIS skills, but it offers fewer functionalities. CITYgreen 5.0 is still available for use with ArcView.

**CITYgreen uses the UFORE model to calculate energy savings and air pollution and carbon removal [more].