Having a healthy tree canopy around your home and throughout your community is something that benefits all. Ask most elementary students what trees do for us, and they will almost always come up with answers like clean air and shade, but they do so much more for us. Trees not only provide oxygen, but they also clean the air, filtering out pollutants. With shade comes a cooling factor that can help conserve energy use in our homes and make sidewalks and streets more comfortable, increasing community spirits and boosting local economies. Trees filter water and reduce stress on city wastewater systems by soaking up water in storms and preventing soil erosion. We can get food from trees, use them for noise reduction, and as visual barriers. They help people heal faster, reduce violence, and bring people together. The benefits of trees go on and on, but caring for trees can be dangerous to do on your own without the proper training. This is where a certified arborist comes into play. Finding experienced and professional tree care specialists can be a difficult task. It can also be a challenge for professional arborists to promote themselves.
The International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) provides training and certification for arborists around the world. ISA Certified Arborists are recognized as qualified, competent, and safe tree care professionals who are sought out by the public, government organizations, and other professions. ISA provides a useful tool to find local arborists in your area. The Find An Arborist tool at www.treesaregood.com assists tree owners/managers with locating ISA Certified arborists. This tool has recently been updated. Users can search by multiple resources. Narrowing by credentials can lead to not only certified arborists, but Tree Risk Assessment Qualification, Certified Urban Forest Professional, or Certified Arborist Utility Specialist, to name a few, or searching by location allows for statewide or city searches, and with the city, you can specify the surrounding radius to search within (Fig. 1). A skills search can assist with your needs, for example, whether you require pruning and removals, diagnostics, community tree assessment, or appraisal (Fig. 2).
-
- Figure 1: Search by Credentials or Location.
-
- Figure 2: Search by Skills.
This update is for Certified Arborists as well. With the changes to the search tool, ISA professionals will need to update their profiles. The Find an Arborist tool is now being populated from Accredible instead of ISA’s database. Due to privacy reasons, Accredible cannot automatically populate certain information, like someone’s location. However, every credential holder can go into their profile and opt to input their location, as well as other things like a photo, website, LinkedIn profile, etc. So, if you are an ISA credentialed professional and would like to be searchable, be sure to log into your profile to make the needed changes.
