SWAT (Student Weekend Arborist Team): A model for land grant institutions and cooperative extension systems to conduct street tree inventories

Abstract

SWAT (Student Weekend Arborist Team) is a program affiliated with Cornell University and Extension founded to conduct street tree inventories in New York State communities with 10,000 residents or fewer, a group of communities underserved in community forestry planning.Between 2002 and 2010, SWAT conducted 40 inventories, and data from these inventories has been used to create community forestry management plans for inventoried communities. SWAT's inventory methodology and the program's success provide a model for other land-grant institutions and Extension systems to inventory publicly managed street trees and support community forestry planning in smaller communities throughout the United States. © by Extension Journal, Inc.