SUNY Cortland Speaks for the Trees in Arbor Day Celebrations

04/17/2018 

This Arbor Day, the SUNY Cortland campus is getting an addition to its “Tree Walk.”

At 11 a.m. on Friday, April 27, Steven Broyles, professor and chair of the Biological Sciences Department, will plant a burr oak, which boasts the largest acorns of any North American oak tree, in between Bowers and Van Hoesen Halls. Student, faculty and staff volunteers are welcome to assist in the planting.

Broyles and Adam Levine, facilities and geographic information systems manager, will then lead a tour of the campuses’ trees starting at noon from outside Bowers Hall.

The SUNY Cortland tree walk website maps out the College’s urban forest and provides detailed information on each tree species. The forest contains over 35 different species of trees, each tagged with QR codes that may be scanned with smartphones to access more information.

The digital map is just one of the things SUNY Cortland is doing to demonstrate its concern for the environment in general, and trees in particular, during this year’s campus recognition of Arbor Day.

The Cortland Speaks for the Trees initiative is themed after The Lorax, a classic Dr. Suess book about a strange creature who “speaks for the trees” in the midst of a profit-inspired environmental onslaught hat introduced a generation of children to sustainability. It incorporated many fun activities in order to get the campus talking about trees and the ecosystem.

“Trees do amazing work in the environment, from scrubbing the atmosphere of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, to mitigating water runoff to help prevent floods,” said Broyles. “They also help conserve energy by providing shade that helps cool buildings and parking lots and cars, but they can also act as windbreaks in the winter and help with saving heating costs.”

The Campus Tree Advisory Committee, the SUNY Cortland Recreation Association and the Biology Club set up a display in the Student Life Center at which students, faculty and staff may compete at tree trivia in order to win prizes. The display incorporated a paper model of the fictional Truffula tree from The Lorax. Passersby were encouraged to write their own personal message about conservation on the leaves of the tree.

The College is up for renewal of its Tree Campus USA status, originally earned in March 2014. SUNY Cortland merited this recognition by meeting Tree Campus USA’s five core standards for sustaining campus forestry. Among these stipulations is an official campus observance of Arbor Day.

“Trees provide us with a lot of joy and there’s very good information out there that shows that people who live in a green environment that is full of trees have greater happiness and better health outlooks,” Broyles said.

Contact Broyles for further information, and follow cortland_speak4trees on Instagram.

Prepared by Communications Office writing intern Ben Mayberry