The town of Bristol is graced with a beautiful urban forest, nurtured over many years, and the town is taking steps to make it even better.

Under the guidance of the Bristol Conservation Commission (sitting as the Tree Council), Bristol has made significant investments in tree planting, maintenance and education. At our annual Arbor Day celebration, Bristol students plant and learn about trees around town. This is why, for the 16th year in a row, Bristol has been named a “Tree City USA,” but it’s time to raise our game.

In a terrific demonstration of cooperation and teaming, the Conservation Commission, leveraging a DEM grant, has joined forces with Roger Williams University, aided by a Hassenfeld Family Foundation grant establishing student “Hassenfellows” for the university’s volunteer Davidson Corps, to begin an ambitious project to map and inventory the trees of Bristol. Using an App called Opentreemap, we will record our trees’ species, size, condition, and other traits that will be instantly available for viewing on a map of Bristol.

What’s even cooler (trees ARE cool!), it has the ability to show the economic value of our trees associated with energy savings, pollution reduction, storm water management, cooling and more. Just the roughly 500 trees we’ve mapped downtown have a yearly benefit of more than $23,000! This offering has been used by cities from Philadelphia to London to Newport and beyond. It’s our turn!

Members of the Conservation Commission, along with grad students from RWU, have been testing the app with primarily downtown trees. It’s time to rapidly expand the effort, and we need your help to do it.

At the recent Arbor Day celebration held at the Bristol Industrial Park, almost 20 people signed up as volunteer “mappers.” We’d like to at least double that number. We’ll be running a (brief) class for all volunteers this month, at which we will teach you how to use Opentreemap, and the fundamentals of tree identification, measurement and condition assessment. Everyone who signs up will receive the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Trees, to help you with tree identification, courtesy of Roger Williams University.

Carry your phone with the app this summer as you enjoy the natural beauty of Bristol and map some trees! We need Bristolians, working with Roger Williams students, to significantly increase the number of trees we can map and track in Bristol.

A comprehensive tree map will be a valuable educational and tree management asset tool for all Bristolians. It will help us plan for the enhancement of one of Bristol’s most important natural assets — its urban forest. Trees decrease stress, are a natural mood enhancer and may even improve our immune systems. We owe a lot to our trees.

Please contact Tony Morettini, Bristol Conservation Commission, at tmorettini@gmail.com or Stephen White, at RWU, at swhite@rwu.edu for more information or if you are interested in helping out.

Tony Morettini
Stephen White