Tree Valuation Calculator

A neighbour poisons, lops or removes your tree; a storm or a vehicle destroys it; an insurer asks what was lost. Tree damage compensation turns on a figure that survives being argued with, and that means a named method, measured inputs and a qualified signature.

One limit worth knowing: in a QCAT tree application under the Neighbourhood Disputes Act, no financial value may be placed on a tree. A valuation belongs in a negotiation, an insurance claim or a damages claim — for a dispute that is heading to court, see expert witness reports.

Fines themselves come from the penalty provisions in a council’s local law. What a valuation adds is the dollar figure for the loss: councils in South East Queensland can seek compensation, replacement planting or restoration where a protected tree is removed or damaged, and a valuation of the tree is how that figure is put together. The same approach is used to set bonds on protected trees near construction.

Every council handles it differently — see the tree rules for each SEQ council.

Tree values feed into development applications in three ways: as the basis for bonds on trees to be retained, in offset or replacement conditions for trees to be removed, and in the cost-benefit case for keeping a tree rather than designing around its loss. A valuation usually sits alongside an arboricultural impact assessment rather than replacing it.

The Burnley method of tree valuation was developed at the Burnley campus in Melbourne (McGarry and Moore, 1988) and revised by Moore in 1991. It is the most widely used amenity tree valuation method in Australia.

Value = tree volume × base value × life expectancy × form and vigour × location

• Tree volume treats the crown as an inverted cone: ⅓ × π × (crown spread ÷ 2)² × height.
• Base value is the average retail price of at least three nursery specimens over 1 m³, divided by their volume — dollars per cubic metre. Because it comes from current prices, the method keeps pace with inflation on its own.
• Life expectancy runs from 1.0 for 50 years or more down to 0.5 under 10 years.
• Form and vigour runs from 1.0 for a perfect specimen to 0 for a dead tree.
• Location runs from 1.0 for perfect suitability to 0.4 for a species unsuited to the site.

The 1991 revision replaced the original cylinder volume with the cone and dropped a volume modifier that had been criticised as a fudge factor. It is sometimes confused with STEM, New Zealand’s Standard Tree Evaluation Method, which is a separate, points-based system.

The first version, published by McGarry and Moore in 1988. It measured the tree as a cylinder rather than a cone, and multiplied in a volume modifier that cut the value of large trees: 1.0 under 100 m³, falling in steps to 0.1 over 4,000 m³.

Value = tree volume × base value × life expectancy × volume modifier × form and vigour × location

The base value came from the same nursery prices — at least three specimens over 1 m³, from different nurseries — measured as cylinders too. Arborists criticised the volume modifier as a fudge factor, and Moore dropped it in 1991. The calculator includes the original for checking valuations made with it.

Arboriculture Australia and the New Zealand Arboricultural Association developed this method in 2022 for MIS 506, their Minimum Industry Standard for tree valuation, and renamed it AANZAA-Value in 2026. It draws on Burnley, CAVAT, City of Melbourne, STEM and Thyer.

Value = market baseline value × land use × social factor × quality factor

• Market baseline value comes from trunk diameter, priced from a national nursery survey and updated for CPI each year — for 2026, $140.36 per cm of a young tree’s trunk diameter and $18.32 per cm² of trunk area. Canopy area can stand in for trunk diameter.
• Land use is 1.0 for public land and listed trees, 0.25 for private urban land, and 0.1 for unreserved Crown land or private rural land.
• Social factor scores the tree’s setting among other trees, its ecosystem value, the local population, the area’s canopy cover and any listed significance.
• Quality factor scores vitality, structure and life expectancy, out of 84.

For a dispute over the loss of or damage to a private tree, the method sets land use at 0.25 and the social factor at 1.0.

Developed by Peter Thyer in Sydney in 1984 and released for public use in 1985. Its author publishes a free worksheet, last laid out in 2015.

Value = size factor × age factor × qualities × planting cost

• Size combines trunk girth, height, dripline diameter and the crown’s side-view area.
• Age factor is 0.02 × the tree’s age in years, plus 0.5.
• Qualities adds five physical scores — health, environmental benefit, life expectancy, how hard the species is to re-establish, and growth rate — to three social ones: social benefit, form and features, and social significance.
• Planting cost is the landscape industry rate to supply and plant a tree in a 5-litre pot, from published NSW and ACT or Victorian rates brought up to date with the CPI.

It was designed for public trees, and its author does not recommend it for valuing a private tree to its owner.

A council-developed formula, derived by Dr Peter Yau in 1990 from the Maurer-Hoffman formula and used by the City of Melbourne to charge for public trees removed for development.

Value = base value × species × aesthetics × locality × condition

The base value comes from trunk diameter through a published table, last updated to 2013 values. Like Burnley, it then adjusts for condition and setting — but its locality scale runs from 0.5 in bushland to 2.5 on a city centre boulevard.

The Standard Tree Evaluation Method, published by Ron Flook in 1996 and used by most New Zealand councils that list notable trees. It is a separate method from Burnley.

Value = (points × wholesale price of a five-year-old tree + planting + upkeep) × 2

Twenty attributes are scored 3, 9, 15, 21 or 27 points: five for condition (form, occurrence, vigour, function and age), five for amenity (stature, visibility, proximity, role and climate), and ten notable attributes that most trees score nothing on. The upkeep is the cost of maintaining a replacement until it reaches the lost tree’s age, and the × 2 converts wholesale costs to retail, as the method suggests. Because the points are added rather than multiplied, STEM showed the least variation between appraisers in the Journal of Arboriculture comparison.

Software from the USDA Forest Service and its partners that models what a tree does for the environment — carbon stored and absorbed, air pollution removed, stormwater held back — and puts a dollar figure on it. MIS 506 accepts it for ecosystem services only. It is not an amenity valuation, and it needs the software and local data, so it is not in the calculator.

A UK points-based system for visual amenity, first published by Rodney Helliwell in 1967 and now maintained by the Arboricultural Association. Helliwell tree valuation scores six factors — size, useful life expectancy, importance in the landscape, other trees nearby, relation to setting and form — multiplies the points together, and converts the total at a set value per point: £53.99 for an individual tree from January 2026.

Moore designed Burnley to follow the same principle of multiplying related factors. Helliwell is not in the calculator: its factor tables are published only in the Arboricultural Association’s own guidance note.

Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees, developed by the London Tree Officers Association and used by UK councils to manage public trees as assets. CAVAT tree valuation is a depreciated replacement cost method: stem area × a unit value factor (£23.56 per cm² for 2025–26), adjusted for local population density, public visibility and attributes, then for the tree’s structure and crown, and finally for life expectancy.

It is detailed and well documented, but built around UK population data and UK nursery prices, which is why the calculator treats it as a comparison for CAVAT trees in Australia rather than a local valuation.

The US method from the Council of Tree & Landscape Appraisers’ Guide for Plant Appraisal. It values a tree on the cross-sectional area of its trunk at 1.4 m, multiplied by a regional price per unit area, then reduced by percentages for species, condition and location. In the US this work is called tree appraisal, which is where the term comes from.

The calculator uses the trunk formula as published in the Journal of Arboriculture comparison, with a basic price taken from the City of Melbourne’s conversion of the CTLA rate. CTLA’s current tenth edition restructures the adjustments, so treat this as an indicative comparison rather than a current US appraisal.