RENSSELAERVILLE — As part of a developing program, the Albany County Soil and Water Conservation District will help the town of Rensselaerville identify and monitor potential problem trees in its two town parks — Rensselaerville Park and Bayard Elsbree Memorial Park.

Still in its infancy, the program is “getting off the ground,” said Susan Lewis, the district’s long-time director. She “hopes that we will be able to offer this service to additional municipalities for not only parks, but eventually inventorying street trees, municipality-managed lands, as well as cemeteries, in the near future.”

The project catalogs invasive trees as well as damaged trees.

The district will spend approximately two weeks analyzing the trees at Rensselaerville’s parks and issuing each tree a rating based on its condition and the impact it might have on structures and passersby if the tree fell or lost branches.

The study will also alert the town to invasive tree species that might bully out native ones. 

Ultimately, the district will recommend certain trees for removal, and possibly help the town replace them. 

The program began in 2019, when the county assessed the trees of three parks in the village of Ravena, which is located in the town of Coeymans. 

“The data that is provided to the municipality includes tree species, size, level of concern and GPS coordinates,” Lewis told The Enterprise in an email this week. 

“The detailed summary provides long term and short term monitoring suggestions as well as target trees that may require further evaluation by a certified arborist,” she went on. “In the Ravena Dog Park, we were able to further assist the Village with a tree planting project to replace those that were removed due to their emerald ash borer damage.”

In those assessments, each tree received both an impact and condition rating on a scale of 1 to 4. A rating of 1 means that there were few to no issues with the tree’s integrity and that it was far from any structures or areas where people might be gathering. A rating of 4 for each domain suggested that there were serious concerns about integrity and a large chance that the tree might cause damage. 

Further notes on the nature of any damage as well as whether it was invasive or not were also given for each tree, along with any recommendations for removal. 

As far as invasive species go — like the buckthorn that was identified in Ravena’s dog park — it’s important to be aware of them regardless of their condition or impact, and so the study is useful in that way as well. 

“We are always interested in invasive species,” Lewis said, “because they’re drowning out a lot of our natives, so we’re always listing that if we do find those.”

She added that the district is involved with the Capital Region Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management and taps the partnership for help in identifying invasives. 

Rensselaerville was selected for study this year because the town had been invited to participate in the pilot study in 2019 but did not move forward with it; the district reached out to the town again this year when funding for additional staff time became available and the town board voted unanimously to participate.

“Once staff members begin an assessment at a park, it can take up to 2 weeks of onsite inventorying and additional time in the office to summarize the data and transfer the GPS points from an online mapping system,” Lewis said.