Municipal Tree Care & Planning Services
Rainbow’s municipal tree care experts specialize in managing public trees and green infrastructure. We work with city foresters and planning departments across Minnesota to offer customized consulting services around street reconstruction, canopy cover, stormwater management, and plans for managing long-range concerns such as Emerald Ash Borer (EAB). From small towns to large metro area cities and suburbs, our municipal consultants can partner with local staff to help your community define and achieve tree and green space goals.
Customized municipal planning
Our comprehensive inventory management and cost comparison tools support effective budget planning. Specializing allows our municipal experts to respond to the unique needs faced by the professionals caring for the trees in their community. We also stay current on emerging tree health issues such as burr oak blight, oak wilt, Dutch elm disease, and EAB. Whether your community has a dedicated forestry staff, or a smaller team whose members wear multiple hats, we can expand what your city is able to accomplish alone. For example, as Emerald Ash Borer expands its footprint in Minnesota, we continue to help cities address questions their residents will have including:
- The cost of management
- The environmental impact of treating or removing trees
- Communicating their community’s plan
Working with community staff, city foresters, and planning departments has allowed us to quickly respond to the growing Emerald Ash Borer problem in Minnesota. Managing an issue like EAB is a team effort between our arborists, community leaders, and residential advocates. That’s why we’ve partnered with dozens of Minnesota cities to control this deadly invasive pest. As a proud Minneapolis area community member, Rainbow will support neighborhood groups, homeowner advocates, and community leaders to help manage EAB together.
Inventory management is essential for budgeting
Rainbow Treecare offers inventory management for publicly owned trees. Our comprehensive inventory process includes documenting quantitative and qualitative assessments of urban forest assets with details including:
- Tree location
- Species
- Health condition rating
- Size
Inventory management of green infrastructure can be layered into the city’s gray infrastructure database to shape budget planning and decision making.
Advanced Technology for Effective Municipal Tree Management
Invasive pest issues such as Emerald Ash Borer have highlighted the importance of a quality tree inventory in predicting budgets and prioritizing management plans. With this information, we can see beyond the predicted number of trees that will be affected, and determine which neighborhoods are likely to be impacted the most. That means a pest such as EAB can be managed differently from one tree and location to the next. After performing an inventory, we can make recommendations for services such as tree health improvement protocols, or removal and replacement of trees located in parks, boulevards, and other public spaces. Emerging technology can even allow us to locate potential planting spaces and make recommendations around the size and type of tree!
Effective Stakeholder Communication
We not only collect and analyze data, Rainbow’s municipal tree consultants effectively communicate the results to agency staff, local officials, and community residents. The data files we create with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow us to create powerful advanced mapping tools that can be used by cities in their own management efforts. With resources like these, our experts can help you explain your department’s goals around management plans, tree inventories, and large scale removal projects.
Call now to schedule a meeting
Our municipal consultants can help your community maximize budget resources to achieve your green space and tree-related goals. Whether you are ready to develop a plan, respond to a funding proposal, or are just learning about your community’s tree needs, our consultants are here to help.
“It’s critical that agencies and organizations that are charged with being stewards of our urban forests plan for the arrival of the Emerald Ash Borer in their communities. By proactively planning communities can significantly reduce both the environmental and economic impacts of EAB. The insights and expertise of the staff at Rainbow TreeCare were extremely valuable for us in Burnsville as we worked to pull together our EAB Management Plan.”
– Terry Schultz, Retired Director of Parks, Recreation & Natural Resources, City of Burnsville
