REGULAR MEETING OF THE URBAN FORESTRY COMMITTEE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2026, AT 10:30 A.M. PERMITTING AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER, ROOM 1401 6310 WILHELMINA DELCO DRIVE AUSTIN, TEXAS Some members of the Urban Forestry Committee may be participating by videoconference. The meeting may be viewed online at: http://www.austintexas.gov/page/watch-atxn-live Public comment will be allowed in-person or remotely via telephone. Speakers may only register to speak on an item once either in-person or remotely and will be allowed up to three minutes to provide their comments. Registration no later than noon the day before the meeting is required for remote participation by telephone. To register to speak remotely, contact Nicole Corona, 737-291-3084, Nicole.Corona@austintexas.gov. CURRENT COMMISSIONERS: Richard Brimer, Chair Martin Luecke, Vice Chair Annie Fierro Justin Fleury AGENDA CALL TO ORDER PUBLIC COMMUNICATION: GENERAL The first ten speakers signed up prior to the meeting being called to order will each be allowed a three-minute allotment to address their concerns regarding items not posted on the agenda. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1. Approve the minutes of the Urban Forestry Committee Regular Meeting on May 13, 2026. DISCUSSION ITEMS 2. Presentation regarding the Wildfire Symposium Summary. Presentation by Nico Hauwert, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Austin Community College. 3. Discussion of the East Austin tree planting project. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS City Code requires at least two board members sponsor an item to be included on an agenda. This section of the agenda provides members an opportunity to request items for future agendas. Staff should assume that if there is no objection from other members expressed at the meeting, the members’ silence indicates approval for staff to include on the next agenda. ADJOURNMENT The City of Austin is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reasonable modifications and equal access to communications will be provided upon request. For assistance, please contact the Liaison or TTY users’ route through 711. A person may request language access accommodations no later than 48 hours before the scheduled meeting. Please call or email Nicole Corona at Austin Watershed Protection at 737-291-3084, Nicole.Corona@austintexas.gov to request service or for additional information. For more information on the Urban Forestry Committee, please contact Nicole Corona at 737-291- 3084, Nicole.Corona@austintexas.gov.
URBAN FORESTRY COMMITTEE MINUTES REGULAR MEETING WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2026 The Urban Forestry Committee convened in a regular meeting on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at the Permitting and Development Center, Room 1405, located at 6310 Wilhelmina Delco Drive in Austin, Texas. Vice Chair Luecke called the Urban Forestry Committee Meeting to order at 12:04 p.m. Commissioners in Attendance: Martin Luecke, Vice Chair Justin Fleury Commissioners in Attendance Remotely: Richard Brimer, Chair Annie Fierro PUBLIC COMMUNICATION: GENERAL None present. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1. Approve the minutes of the Urban Forestry Committee Regular Meeting on December 1, 2025. The minutes from the Urban Forestry Committee Regular Meeting on December 1, 2025, were approved on Commissioner Fleury’s motion, Chair Brimer’s second, on a 3-0 vote. Commissioner Fierro was off the dais. STAFF BRIEFINGS 2. 3. Staff briefing regarding an update on the Urban Forest Replenishment Fund. Presentation by Emily King, Urban Forester, Austin Climate Action and Resilience. The presentation was made by Emily King, Urban Forester, Austin Climate Action and Resilience. Staff briefing regarding the Youth Forestry Council. Presented by Britney Huynh, Program Development Coordinator, and Zane Williams, Austin Climate Action and Resilience. The presentation was made by Britney Huynh, Program Development Coordinator, and Zane Williams, Austin Climate Action and Resilience. 1 DISCUSSION ITEMS 4. Discussion of Windsor Park Neighborhood Association's Shade the Streets initiative. Presented by Commissioner Luecke. Discussed. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS None. ADJOURNMENT Vice Chair Luecke adjourned the meeting at 1:21 p.m. without objection. 2
March 2023 Aerial Photo Barton Creek Greenbelt west of Mopac Wildfire remains October 2025 by Nico Hauwert Justice Jones Austin Fire Dept 2024 talk (https://youtu.be/aRCwN_fdFWM?list=PLLf4G2eXDF-5Rke2Ixjdo3DC7tcxdaIKo) Sept 15, 2023 Message from Nico Hauwert to Mayor Kirk Watson regarding City plan to expand tree clearing, prescribed burning and pesticides on parkland, including unacknowledged Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan endangered species permit. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DADSz42NhCD3Eoe0AGlpJKEITivvFm99/view?usp=sharing Jan. 26, 2025 Nico Hauwert Wildfire Comments to Mayor and City Council https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPBQ9ROr0Pd-jb6Dq6UWxkvk6jZ72MAR/view?usp=sharing 2023 Wildfire Assessment report on Bright Leaf Preserve with Austin Fire Dept. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-TgjTQFdllJSqXUoEvngbvpc9Mwi9PIV/view?usp=sharing Redman, C.1999. Human Impact on Ancient Environments. University of Arizona Press.240 p. Aronson, James L. Hailemichael, Million, Savin, Samuel M.. 2008. Hominid environments at Hadar from paleosol studies in a framework of Ethiopian climate change: Journal of Human Evolution V 55 p 532–550. Levin, N. E., Brown, F. H., Behrensmeyer, A. K., Bobe, R. & Cerling, T. E. 2011. Paleosol carbonates from the Omo Group: Isotopic records of local and regional environmental change in East Africa. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.04.026. Wright DK (2017) Humans as Agents in the Termination of the African Humid Period. Front. Earth Sci. 5:4. doi: 10.3389/feart.2017.00004 Hughes, Donald J. 1975. Ecology in Ancient Civilizations. The University of New Mexico Press. 181 p. Ehrlich, Ann and Erhich Paul. 1980. Ecoscience: The Greeks and Romans did it too! Mother Earth News. https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/greeks-and-romans-zmaz80mjzraw The land was the best in the world…Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, .. there has never been any considerable accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of sight. The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body..all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; …
Buckley, S.B. 1874. First Annual Report of the Geological and Agricultural Survey of Texas. State Geologist 142 p. From Bray 1904 O’Donnell. 2019. Historical ecology of the Texas Hill Country, Historical Accounts of Vegetation Communities from 1700-1900, with an Emphasis on the Eastern Edge of the Edwards Plateau: Austin Water Balcones Canyonland Technical Report. 35 p. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331582514_HISTORICAL_ECOLOGY_OF_THE_TEXAS_HILL_COUNTRY • Findell and Eltahir (1997) tested the hypothesis suggested by Shukla and Mintz (1982) that soil moisture increases local precipitation by comparing a 14-year soil moisture record in Illinois with precipitation. It found that summer initial soil moisture conditions were a strong predictor of drought or flood years. • Englehart and Douglas (2002) examined patterns of drought and flooding from 1910 to 2000 in central United States with large-scale climate modes, including El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), La Niña, and Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and found that antecedent soil moisture and vegetation growth were better predictors of extended dry conditions. • Pal et al (2000, 2001, 2002) used regional modeling to show that local soil moisture conditions affected drought and flood conditions in the Midwest United States by creating anticyclones similar to Namias (1960) hypothesis. • Koster et al (2004) used multiple models to show Central Texas into the high plains to the north have a strong coupling between soil moisture and local climate, including temperature and precipitation. Findell, Kirsten L. and Eltahir, Elfatih A.B. 1997. An analysis of the soil moisture-rainfall feedback, based on direct observations from Illinois: Water Resources Research, vol. 33, no. 4, pages 725–735, April 1997 Englehart, Phil J. and Douglas, Arthur V. 2002. On some characteristic variations in warm season precipitation over the central United States (1910–2000): Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 107, no. D16, 4286, 10.1029/2001JD000972 Pal, J. S., E. E. Small, and E. A. B. Eltahir. 2000. Simulation of regional scale water and energy budgets: Influence of a new moist physics scheme within Reg CM, J. Geophys. Res., 105, 29,579 – 29, 594. 2000 -Pal et al, JGR Simulation regional-scale.pdf Pal, J. S., and E. A. B. Eltahir. 2001. Pathways relating soil moisture conditions to future summer rainfall within a model of the land-atmosphere system., J. Climate, 14, 1227 – 1242. Pal, J. S., and E. A. B. Eltahir. 2002. Teleconnections of soil moisture and rainfall during the 1993 midwest summer flood: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 29, No. 18, 1865, doi:10.1029/2002gl014815. 2002GL014815 (mit.edu) Temperature measurements collected over …
Namias, Jerome. 1960. Factors in the initiation, perpetuation, and termination of drought: International Association of Scientific Hydrology Commission on Surface Waters Publication 51, p. 81-94. Makarieva AM, Gorshkov VG, Li B-L (2009) Precipitation on land versus distance from the ocean: evidence for a forest pump of atmospheric moisture. Ecol Complex 6:302–307. Sheil, Douglas. 2018. Forests, atmospheric water and an uncertain future: the new biology of the global water cycle: Forest Ecosystems (2018) 5:19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40663-018-0138-y
Wilcox, B. P., and Y. Huang (2010), Woody plant encroachment paradox: Rivers rebound as degraded grasslands convert to woodlands, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L07402, doi:10.1029/2009GL041929. Nowak et al 2014 calculated that across the United States 17 million tons of NO2, O3, PM2.5, SO2 were removed by trees in 2010. In Travis and Hays Counties a range of 1.87-3.37 tons/km2 of NO2, O3, PM2.5, SO2 were removed by trees in 2010. “96.3 percent of pollution removal from trees occurred on rural land” Brabec et al. 2002 concluded that impervious cover needed to be refined with forest versus open cover to accurately predict pollution attenuation and surface runoff for land planning. ” In addition to the focus on impervious thresholds, there is preliminary evidence in the scientific literature that the new model for watershed-based water quality planning requires an equal focus on threshold amounts of forest cover in the watershed that can act to mitigate the impervious areas within the system.” Nowak, David J.; Hirabayashi, Satoshi; Bodine, Allison; Greenfield, Eric. 2014. Tree and forest effects on air quality and human health in the United States. Environmental Pollution. 193: 119-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2014.05.028 Available from: https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/46102 Brabec, Elizabeth; Schulte, Stacey; and Richards, Paul L. 2002. Planning Impervious Surfaces and Water Quality: A Review of Current Literature and Its Implications for Watershed: Journal of Planning Literature 2002 16: 499. DOI: 10.1177/088541202400903563. Available at: http://jpl.sagepub.com/content/16/4/499 • Wildfire/prescribed burning in general result in increasing runoff, soil erosion, loss of sequestered carbon, release of downstream nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, algal blooms with potential for toxic cyanobacteria, and release of mercury (Planas et al 2000; Lucotte et al., 2016). • Worldwide release of stored carbon, phosphorus and nitrates (Pellegrini et al., 2018) • Wildfires are calculated to contribute 800 tons per year of airborne mercury which constitutes 25% of all anthropogenic sources of mercury (Cyberwest, 2001). • Particulate matter >2.5 microrons “air pollution called PM2.5 – responsible for an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths every year globally. This includes over a million deaths in China, over half a million in India, almost 200,000 in Europe, and over 50,000 in the United States.” Cyberwest. 2001. Mercury emissions found in wildfire smoke: Cyberwest Magazine August 24, 2001. Available from: Mercury emissions found in wildfire smoke (cyberwest.com) Feiger Erin. 2023. Research uncovers stunning factor behind nearly 200,000 cases of dementia each year: ‘Toxins for the brain’ :Cool Down 9/14/2023 https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/research-uncovers- stunning-factor-behind-nearly-200-000-cases-of-dementia-each-year-toxins-for-the- …
“Considering all the interests dependent upon the water supply of this region, there would seem to be little ground for opposing the policy of maintaining (and where necessary establishing) a forest cover upon these arid hills.” Bray 1904.
