One of the great tenets of environmental accounting is finding dollar values for things that were previously overlooked. The classic question "What's the value of a tree?" might be answered by many as "priceless", but put into the context of an urban environment and the many services that the trees provide, it's useful to find a way to add them up. Joel Makower points us to a fascinating study by the Casey Trees Endowment that tallied up an average value for the services provided by all the trees in the District of Columbia.

Among the services provided: Air pollution removal, carbon storage & sequestration, building energy-use savings, as well as structural and compensatory value. The total value of the roughly 2 million trees in the district? Over three and a half BILLION dollars.

Keep in mind that none of this accounting tries to get into the value of asthetics, mental health, and property values. So in reality the trees are worth a lot more.

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