News photo by Steve Schulwitz Leafless trees fill the yard of City Hall in Alpena on Wednesday. The city is going to have a tree study conducted late last year redone because of the damage caused to the local tree inventory by the ice storm in March.

ALPENA – The findings of a tree study for Alpena conducted by the Davey Resource Group will need to be redone because of the recent ice storm in March.

Alpena Engineer, Steve Shultz explained the study and how it will simplify the process of keeping track of the health and condition of area trees.

“Because of the study it will be a lot easier to keep up with now thanks to all digital files, and when we go out and plant a new tree, we can enter the information pertaining to that tree and keep track of it,” Shultz said. “When a tree gets trimmed, we can actually click on that tree and enter that information.”

Keeping track of all the trees within the area is no easy task, but thanks to the study it will be much easier to maintain healthy forestry in the future.

“We can go through and keep a list of all the trees that have been planted in recent years and monitor them,” Schultz said. “It is a huge undertaking and luckily it was 100% funded by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Urban and Community Forestry Grant.”

Because of the ice storm the results of the study will not be released until a reassessment takes place.

“We asked them to come back because of all the trees we lost with the ice storm, and I informed them that we would be willing to pay for that outside of the grant,” Schultz explained. “However, they said there was enough money left from the grant for them to complete the reassessment.”

One of the purposes of the assessment is to analyze local trees and establish areas where new trees should be planted, and old trees cared for. One of the goals is to prevent future damage by properly maintaining local trees.

“They call it an urban canopy, it helps not only from storm damage but to ensure that we maintain the green areas throughout the city,” Schultz said. “This program will point out areas where we should plant trees, and we can use that as a guide to acquire more green coverage where it’s needed”

“It helps us learn what to trim and when to trim them, and what trees to take out because they are a danger,” he added.

Schultz said the study will help the City with future plans to add greenery in the area. Including, making it more accessible to obtain grants pertaining to the addition of trees.

“This study is helping us move forward and this could possibly help us with getting tree grants to plant trees in the future, because we have an inventory and its live and we keep it up to date,” Schultz said. “That’s something that could help us in a grant situation where we’re going out to purchase trees to plant.”