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Besides economic and social benefits,
forests provide ecological benefits that are harder to quantify.
These benefits include erosion control and water
quality, heat mitigation and air quality,
and wildlife habitat.1
What are these services worth? In one sense,
their value is infinite. Wisconsin�s economy would fail without
clean water and breathable air. These
fundamental �ecosystem services� provided in part by forests, are
largely taken for granted because they are free.
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Have you considered how much value you receive from our forests?
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Trees in Wisconsin minimize global
warming and air pollution by:
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producing oxygen that we need to breathe,
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removing from the air and storing tons of
carbon per year, |
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removing nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone and particulate matter.1 |
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| In our cities trees provide shade in summer and
insulation in winter, reducing air conditioning bills by up to 25
percent and heating bills by 10 to 20 percent.4
This reduces energy production requirements and in turn reduces air
pollution. |
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Aerial photo of
New York City with hottest surfaces overlaid in red.
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Cities are
heat islands; they tend to be two to eight degrees (Fahrenheit) higher in
temperature than rural areas. Some health problems are associated
with excessive temperatures. Trees in cities are able to counter
some of the heat-island effect.
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Forests protect lakes, streams,
and groundwater. |
| Wisconsin lakes and streams are important
to our Wisconsin identity and quality of life, and we all deserve
healthy surface waters and groundwater. |
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70% of Wisconsin residents and 95% of
Wisconsin communities get their water from groundwater.6 |
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Because
Wisconsin knows how important forests are to water quality, it has
already developed the �Forestry
Best Management Practices Field Manual�. Best Management Practices
are voluntary guidelines to help landowners, loggers, and natural
resource managers minimize nonpoint pollution from forest
management activities.6a
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| The less contiguous forest we have, the
more runoff and the less natural filtration of our drinking water will
occur. |
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Cleaner source water equals more water that is ready
for consumption and less water that needs to be treated, which is also
costly. |
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Put simply, would you rather drink water that
percolated through forested soils and was pumped as groundwater, or
water that ran off of a parking lot, drained through a pipe to a river
and was then treated with chemicals at a treatment facility?7 |
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A study of several watersheds in
Wisconsin concluded that high levels of forest were associated with
healthy streams. |
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�Forest land cover tends to reduce runoff of
water,
sediments,
nutrients, and toxins.
Forests maintain
more stable stream banks, stream flows, water temperatures, and
supply food and habitat for fish and other aquatic life.�8 |
| Wildlife have inherent value. They also play a role in our strong
recreation and tourism economy
and our social traditions. A large
number of fish and wildlife species depend on the shelter, food,
and water quality benefits discussed above that our forests provide. |
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Some of our forest species include:
| turkey |
mink |
| otter |
whitetail deer |
| woodcock |
beaver |
| waterfowl |
grouse |
| wolves |
muskrat |
| fisher |
bear |
In Wisconsin 33
threatened
and 34
endangered
species of plants and animals depend on forests to survive. Some of these animals species include: |
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American marten |
spruce grouse |
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worm eating warbler |
wood turtle |
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osprey |
Acadian flycatcher |
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Red-shouldered Hawk-Threatened
species, requires un-fragmented forests
see a map of endangered species in your county |
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Different forest species need different types and ages of forest
(old-growth, regenerating, etc.). |
| Planning can protect wildlife habitats by identifying the need for
contiguous forests as well as different forest types and successional stages.
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