Trees spark a new trend
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) - February 20, 2008 Some prodded by environmental awareness, some by regulatory
edict, they're stepping up tree plantings in hopes of improving air
quality, reducing energy consumption and easing storm water flows.
And a four-man team of scientists at the University of Vermont
is helping urban planners and foresters gauge the existing "tree
canopy" - or cover - in their cities and set realistic goals for
increasing it.
Their expertise has been tapped by public and private groups in
New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and several Maryland towns
eager to green their cities with the help of private property
owners.
"Everybody's trying to do their best to improve tree canopies
and work with developers and urban planners to make sure they
remove as little tree canopy as possible in their projects," said
Mark Buscaino, executive director of Casey Trees, a not-for-profit
in Washington, D.C., that works to green the nation's capital.
"The benefits are many. First, there's the environmental. Trees
cool things. They remove particulates in the air. They're linked to
mitigating storm water flows, which is an enormous problem in all
urban areas because there's so much impervious surface."
Generally speaking, tree canopy refers to the part of a city
that's shaded by trees. Quantifying size was once an elusive task.
But the UVM scientists, working with a research scientist from
the U.S. Forest Service, have used computer programs and their own
expertise to combine satellite images with aerial photos and tax
maps to ascertain tree canopy size and break it down by parcel,
determining which trees are on public land and which are on private
land.
"If you don't even know what you have, you can't make any
decisions," said Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, a geospatial analyst with
the team. "It wasn't that people didn't want to plant trees or
didn't want a tree canopy program. But they needed the hard data to
make decisions. That's where we came in."
The group consulted on a study of Baltimore's ecosystem in 2002,
and word of their methods spread.
Their expertise dovetailed with a growing awareness among
elected officials that trees could be more than decorations for
urban areas.
In addition to giving off oxygen, they cool the air, limit sun
exposure and act as sponges for precipitation, catching rainwater
and releasing it gradually instead of having it flow directly into
storm sewers.
Charlie Lord, executive director for the Urban Ecology Institute
in Boston, has worked with the scientists.
"They help you gather the data, analyze it and help you answer
the basic questions - `Where do we have trees?' `Where don't we
have trees?' - and the more sophisticated ones, like `Where would
we plant to improve our carbon footprint?' or `Where are the best
places to plant to improve our water quality?"' Lord said.
The group's work helped the city of New York establish the goals
for a 1-million-tree initiative that kicked off last fall, aiming
to plant that many trees over a 23-year period.
"It really kicked off everything, from a policy perspective, a
natural resource management perspective, a planning perspective. It
helped us set our sights on 1 million trees," said Fiona Watt,
chief of forestry and horticulture for the New York Department of
Parks and Recreation.
"People used to overlook trees in cities," said Watt.
"They're now viewed as increasingly important because of the work
of scientists who've helped us quantify those benefits. The
environmental benefits and property value benefits are
quantifiable, but the social ones are harder. They make us feel
good, they improve our moods, they make neighborhoods more
beautiful.
"Tree canopies can make neighborhoods more cohesive and bring
people together, bonding them over this common resource," she
said.
The fruit of the team's work may not be visible yet, but it will
be eventually. In the world of forestry, there's an old proverb:
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next-best
time is today."