Carthage's urban forest took a beating in the last year and a half.

Two ice storms in about a year forced the removal of more than 200 trees and 100,000 cubic yards of branches and wooded debris across Carthage.

Even after that, a recent inventory of the trees in Carthage's seven parks showed the urban forest in remarkably good shape, according to a survey by Skip Kincaid, with Skip Kincaid Urban Foresters.

"That is kind of surprising to me because I thought it would be worse," said Carthage Parks Administrator Alan Bull. "He was here in January right after the ice storm."

Bull presented the survey to the Carthage City Council public service committee at its regular Monday meeting.

In the survey, Kincaid counted the trees in the seven parks in Carthage.

Among the findings:

• The parks have 1,497 trees, minus one that fell at the golf course last week during a thunderstorm, including 11 stumps.

• The most common species of tree in the parks in the Maple Leaf City is ... the post oak. It comprises 26.7 percent of the trees in the parks compared to sugar maples, which make up 10.5 percent.

• The total cash value of all the trees in Carthage's city parks is $3.9 million, with an average value of $2,608 per tree.

• 57 percent of the trees in the parks, or 854 trees, are rated in good condition, and 35.7 percent, or 535 trees, were rated fair. On the other hand, three trees are dead.

Bull said parks planners would use the inventory to plan where to plant new trees in addition to deciding what to do with the existing trees.

"This report tells you which ones need to be trimmed up and how they need to be trimmed up," Bull said. "Some of them need high crown cleaning,  some just need hazardous limbs taken off. You can use this report to see where you need to put replacement trees because you can look at the map and go, okay, here's three trees right together that are high on list of trees that need to be removed. They're numbered one-12 and, 12 being they need to come out, so we can see which trees need to be gone and we know where we need to plant some so when the older trees come out, these will be ready to go."

The survey rates all the trees on a 12-point scale, with 1 being a healthy tree and 12 being a tree that should be cut down.

"This report allows you to manage the urban forest," Bull said. "Manage as in you look on this report and we know exactly which trees need to come out because of different hazards. Some of them need to come out, not because of hazards but because of where they're at."

It marks every tree on an aerial map of the parks, identifies its species and condition.

The survey cost $16,800 to conduct, with $10,000 coming from a grant from the Missouri Department of Conservation's Tree Resource Improvement and Maintenance Program.