Auburn has received its seventh consecutive Tree Campus USA designation.
Five standards have to be passed in order to get the designation, according to the Arbor Day Foundation.
A university must have a campus tree advisory committee, a campus tree care plan, a campus tree program with dedicated annual expenditures, Arbor Day observance and a service learning project.
The University has improved at growing and maintaining trees, according to Gary Keever, professor of horticulture and a Facilities Management landscape consultant.
“There are more expenditures than I was capturing in those early years, and I think that better reflects what the University is doing to try and protect and preserve our trees,” Keever said.
Keever said he is honored with the reward, but believes Auburn can do more.
“Don’t get me wrong, they are good things happening, but we’re just not there yet where I would like us to be," Keever said. "Sometimes priorities change and trees suffer."
There is always new construction going on at Auburn, according to Keever.
“Much of the building has been within a relatively small core," Keever said. "There’s only a finite amount of area within that core, and as we add buildings, we are displacing trees."
“If you have any doubt, remember the trees that used to be in front of the library," Keever said. "Just move around the campus. The rec center is a footprint, the arena, the village, the parking deck and the new nursing school.”
Auburn needs to do a better job with its on campus trees, according to Keever.
He said the key areas are the planning process, scouting and monitoring for diseases and insects, protecting trees and planting more trees.
One area Auburn can improve is canopy cover, Keever said.
According to the USDA Forrest service, canopy cover is “the percent of a fixed area covered by the crown of an individual plant species..."
A 2010 study by an Auburn graduate student, who inventoried all the managed trees on Auburn’s campus to research canopy cover, found that Auburn’s canopy coverage was 16 percent.
“If you check out some of the other schools, say, in the Atlanta area, Georgia Tech and Agnes Scott, you’re going to find their canopy cover is 50 percent," Keever said. "It’s probably even lower now, with all the trees that have been taken out.”
Campus environment is an important part of recruiting, according to Keever.
“There has been some published studies that say high percentage of college students, when they are looking at college, consider the environment, and in particular, trees," Keever said.
Jennifer Morse, sustainability office communications coordinator, agrees.
“People are looking for that these days," Morse said.
Auburn hired Alexander Hedgepath as Auburn’s first arborist to help care for Auburn’s trees.
Keever said he is excited about the move and believes it could allow for improvements on Auburn’s campus.
“Hiring of the new arborist is such a positive step," Keever said. "He and I have worked closely together, and I think we are going to see big improvements in our campus trees over the next few years.”
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