Utility Arborist Research Fund

Tree Research and Education Endowment Fund (TREE Fund) and Utility Arborist Association (UAA) established the Utility Arborist Research Fund (UARF) in 2010 to finance work with real importance and benefit to utility

tree care professionals. In 2017, the UARF endowment reached its $1.0 million activation goal, and the first grant under this program was awarded in 2018. TREE Fund manages the UARF endowment and administers all research grants awarded, while UAA’s Research Committee advises TREE Fund with respect to research priorities. Given the immense scope of annual utility arboriculture work on a global basis, if UARF-funded research can generate even a 1.0% reduction in tree-related outages, customer complaints, vegetation management complexity or emergency tree work, the financial, public relations, and worker safety returns on investment will be immense. TREE Fund awards a grant of up to $50,000 annually. Since its inception, $712,585 has been granted to a variety of research priorities.

To make a donation directly to the Utility Arborist Research Fund Grant Program, CLICK HERE:

For information on how to apply for a UARF Grant, visit the Research Grant page.

Major Donors ($10,000+)

• ACRT Inc.
• Altec/Styslinger Foundation, Inc.
• Arizona Public Service
• Asplundh Tree Expert, LLC
• Berkshire Hathaway Energy Foundation
• Jarraff by Prinoth
• Lewis Tree Service
• Mowbry’s Tree Service
• National Grid
• Nelson Tree Service, Inc.
• Pacific Gas and Electric Company
• Southco Industries, Inc.
• The Davey Tree Expert Company
• Trees, LLC
• Utility Arborist Association
• Wright Service Corp.

Research Awarded/Completed

2012-2014 was awarded to John Goodfellow’s project, “Development of a Business Case for
Scheduling Utility Vegetation Management on a Preventive vs. Corrective Maintenance Basis”.
Project was completed in 2015.

2016 was awarded to Christopher Halle’s project, Integrated Vegetation Management on
Powerline Rights-of-Ways: Effects of Vegetation Treatment on Plant Communities and Wildlife
Diversity”. Project was completed in 2019.

2018 was awarded to John Goodfellow’s project, “The Cost-effectiveness of Integrated
Vegetation Management”. Project was completed in 2019.

2019 (01) was awarded to Phil Chen’s project, “Cost of Deferred Maintenance”. Project was
completed in 2020.

2019 (02) was awarded to Claudia Luke’s project, “Comparing Integrated Vegetation
Management Treatment Options of Powerline Rights-of-Ways: Effects on Plant Communities
and Wildlife Diversity: Phase Two”. Project was completed in 2023.

2020 was awarded to Gregory Dahle’s project, “Tree caused outages and relationship to
stream and soil type”. Project will be completed in 2024. A TREE Fund Webinar took place in November 2024 during TREE Fund Webinar Series.

2021 was awarded to John Goodfellow’s project, “Characterizing the Risk of Electrical Contact
to Arborists”. Project and Research Report was completed in 2022. John Goodfellow, along
with John Ball, presented his project in the TREE Fund Webinar Series in 2023 with over 800
people attending.

2022 and 2023 were awarded to Dr. Gregory Dahle’s project, “Determining Failure
Characteristics from Distribution Outage Reports”. Total project will be completed in 2028.

2024 was awarded to Dr. Paul Kinder Jr project, “Improving Future Utility Vegetation
Management Options by Developing a Public Collection of Open-Source Annotated Machine
Learning Data Archive”. Project will be completed 2026.