Village staff announces parkway tree inventory to assess health and ecological value

A staff member for the Village of Downers Grove said the village will conduct a parkway tree inventory through October to check the health of its urban forest and measure its ecological value. "The Village maintains more than 23,000 parkway trees, and a regular inventory is important for checking on the health of our urban forest," the staff member said.

The staff member said the inventory will include the standard health check and "additional data needed to calculate the ecological value of our urban forest, like the amount of carbon sequestered, stormwater runoff captured, and energy conserved by the canopy’s shade." Officials said crews will collect those metrics as part of the same fieldwork.

The Village will collect this data through October, the staff member said, and encouraged residents to expect crews in their neighborhoods: "So if you see folks like these admiring your parkway trees, they're simply collecting the necessary data that you will be able to view upon completion of the project." The statement indicated the data will be published after the project ends but did not specify the exact publication date or the platform where results will appear.

No formal votes, funding amounts or contractor names were mentioned in the announcement. The inventory is presented as a data-collection effort to support urban-forest management and valuation; the Village did not provide further details on budget, staffing levels or how the ecological metrics will be calculated.