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Sac State’s forest will gain another 200 trees in the spring, the result of a Cool Parks grant. Photo by Jessica Vernone
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Campus’s Bounty of Trees Is Set to Expand

SUSTAINABLE CAMPUS

Dixie Reid

“By planting in parking lots, where heat radiates from the asphalt, we reduce the ‘heat island effect’ and the overall campus temperature”


The popular belief for years was that Sacramento State, honored since 2012 as a Tree Campus USA, is home to 3,500 trees. That was until Erik Skall, the Grounds & Landscape Services manager, set out to count them all – and found 4,114 trees in the thriving urban forest. 

Thanks to a Cool Parks grant, Sac State will add approximately 200 trees in the Spring 2020 semester, when students join the grounds staff to plant saplings in the Main Quad and parking lots. 

“By planting in parking lots, where heat radiates from the asphalt, we reduce the ‘heat island effect’ and the overall campus temperature,” said Joey Martinez of the Sac State facilities team. 

The University’s new tree contractor, West Coast Arborists Inc., uses GPS equipment and Google Maps to identify any campus trees that are dead, diseased, or have suffered from years of drought. Those trees will be removed and replaced with saplings. And, thanks to the arborists and their modern technology, Sac State will have an updated tree total, without having to go tree to tree across the entire campus. 

05/01/19

Dixie Reid

dixie.reid@csus.edu

Dixie Reid has been a writer for Sac State since 2012 after decades as a newspaper reporter. A Texas native with the accent to prove it, Dixie is crazy about “dear friends, big dogs, good books, great food, day trips, baking cookies, California sunshine (and fog), and kind people.”