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US Cities Lose Tree Cover Just When They Need It Most (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Scientific evidence that trees and green spaces are crucial to the well-being of people in urban areas has multiplied in recent decades. Conveniently, these findings have emerged just as Americans, already among the most urbanized people in the world, are increasingly choosing to live in cities. The problem -- partly as a result of that choice -- is that urban tree cover is now steadily declining across the U.S.
A study in the May issue of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening reports metropolitan areas are experiencing a net loss of about 36 million trees nationwide every year. That amounts to about 175,000 acres of tree cover, most of it in central city and suburban areas but also on the exurban fringes. This reduction, says lead author David Nowak of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), translates into an annual loss of about $96 million in benefits -- based, he says, on "only a few of the benefits that we know about." The economic calculation involves several such benefits that are relatively easy to express in dollar terms -- the capacity of trees to remove air pollution, sequester carbon, conserve energy by shading buildings and reduce power plant emissions.
A study in the May issue of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening reports metropolitan areas are experiencing a net loss of about 36 million trees nationwide every year. That amounts to about 175,000 acres of tree cover, most of it in central city and suburban areas but also on the exurban fringes. This reduction, says lead author David Nowak of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), translates into an annual loss of about $96 million in benefits -- based, he says, on "only a few of the benefits that we know about." The economic calculation involves several such benefits that are relatively easy to express in dollar terms -- the capacity of trees to remove air pollution, sequester carbon, conserve energy by shading buildings and reduce power plant emissions.
With the emerging (but still very small) movement to add a lot of plants to the roofs / sides of buildings, I would like to see a study making a quantitative evaluation as to how much said plants can compensate for the loss of trees.
(((dB)))
Doing themselves in.
Liberals, you are hypocrites again. Cutting your own down.
fuck trees, they don't pay rent on my property so they can go ahead and die
Caring for trees are just a Liberal Fairy Tale.
How about we stop this fake news, and get REAL news! Mmmmkay?!
I visited China this year, and was amazed at how green some of the cities were compared to 10 years ago.
They went on a massive tree planting spree before the Olympics, and those trees are now reaching maturity.
Dutch Elm Disease.
This will only get worse with the advent of solar energy. People putting expensive PE panels on their roof will want maximum efficiency. Thus trees blocking the sun lite for part of the day will be chopped down.
Not even $100 million benefit across the entire nation? That's pocket change.
On the other hand, overall the US is greening. Not just from decreased per-capita greenhouse gas emissions (thanks fracking, for making gas cheaper than coal!) but also from increased forest coverage.
Yes, that's right... the amount of forest coverage has been consistently growing. This is reflected in many developed nations around the world.
On a positive note, that's an addition of 175,000 acres per year that are NOT susceptible to forest fires!
What is the "just when they need it most" part? Is there a sudden, unforeseen shortage of firewood or lumber in the cities?
I'm guessing the submitter must've been recently watching one of those movies where the hero's gun jams just as the bad guy comes around the corner with his own gun drawn.
#DeleteChrome
The US is not even in the top 30 of urbanized countries. And most cities in the US actually try hard to keep green spaces in urban areas.
So, this article already started out as bullshit. Focus your attention where it is needed, not where you score the most clicks assholes.
Census data shows the majority of people live in Suburbs.
I'd like to see a correlation between tree loss and tree protection bylaws within cities. Where I live the city brought in a by-law that said that you could not cut down trees over a certain size on your property without approval from a city arbourist. As soon as they passed it, but before it went into effect, pretty much everyone in my neighborhood (including myself) cut down most of their trees. People only kept the ones they were 100% certain they'd want. I probably cut down 5 large trees and 2 small ones and most of my neighbors did likewise. This is an example of city overreach backfiring.
This is one reason why I never left Canada. You have to move certain places to find it, but you can still find an affordable house on a well-treed lot, 20-30 minutes away from work here.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
As mentioned by others, trees can get sick and die. But, government agencies can (and usually do) over-react to finding any sign of disease or insect attack, and wipe out entire species from any area that MIGHT be affected. Find a particular beetle in a trap? All trees of that type within 500' are cut down within a week.
One of the local colleges planted a lot of fast-growing trees around campus at the turn of the 21st century, as they expanded the "green spaces". Virtually all of those trees are gone now, replaced with "decorative prairie grass", because they chose the WRONG fast-growing trees.
I don't believe it's a choice in the direct sense, but rather an economic reality. To be competitive globally and against automation requires high collaboration among experts and specialists. You mostly find this in populated areas.
Farming automation has reduced the need for rural workers, and mining automation is also ramping up.
If your job allows you to do remote work, then it more likely can be outsourced to Timbuktu for 1/3 your wages.
Table-ized A.I.
Here in Miami after Hurricane Irma I saw a LOT of trees being cut down that only had minor damage (maybe a branch or two down) from the hurricane. People would rather get rid of the whole tree rather than trim it back so it can recover after the storm.
It was extremely depressing as my part of the city is already lacking in tree cover and this hacking and slashing just made it worse. So many people just don't care. One house in particular used to be almost completely shaded in the afternoons but is now in the sun the entire day. I bet their cooling bills will be far higher this summer!
Trees are bad for capitalism! Why have space- and resource-wasting nonsense like TREES when you could pave over that space and charge people to park their cars there? Or get rid of that completely useless public park and put up another high-rise office building, or better yet, luxury 'loft' spaces to lease out to rich people for HUGE profits?
..yeah, sure. Just pave over the whole gods-be-damned country, especially with someone occupying the Whitehouse who wants to open up National Parks to oil drilling and 'development'. Natural spaces? Natural beauty? LOL what do we need that for when it can make more MONEY? MONEY is the only GREEN you should want in your life, right? Excuse me now, I'm going to go throw up.
Have gnu, will travel.
But new developers bring in the cash.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Look to Sacramento, CA for an very obvious example. The entire town used to be littered in trees. Certain parts of downtown and most of the 'post-victorian' dense city housing still is. But all the new buildings going in, as well as redeveloped land, are having the trees removed, even in areas where Dutch Elm wasn't a problem. Anywhere with Oaks is either having them cut out and paying the fine, or letting the soil go dry/poisoning them until they die off, if they are cheapskates. The end result is large 'dead spaces' of urban construction that are essentially leaching off the nearby natural areas for heating, microclimate effects, etc. Some actually remove trees and put in new ones, but in many cases those trees would take decades to provide shade and just as often are cut and replaced every 5-10 years with a different set of trees, so tree cover never actually builds up.
If you move from the central city area out into the suburbs, it gets worse, especially out in the new subdivisions, many of which will have a few token trees either left over from the farmland they were before, or hauled in by truck during development to provide token shade in the park or certain 'deluxe' properties. Most of the houses however are large footprint and placing trees or other deep rooted plants nearby are a hazard for any nearby plumbing, which in many of the subdivisions is basically everywhere, as is submerged electrical wiring, either of which if damaged may require costly excavation to repair. Maybe not this decade, but just in time for that area to become depressed and another area to be redeveloped in place of it, leaving an ecological and economic dystopia in its wake.
Look, another consequence of "environmental" social engineering policy that dictates people live with tiny yards and stack and pack housing. The left's war on sprawl crates less environmentally friendly density while also forcing people to live in ways they prefer not to. It also creates urban hotspots which leads to tainted temperature trends.
We used to plant loads of trees. And up in our mountains when we cut trees, we would plants new ones.
Now, we have California size yards such that 1 and only 1 tree goes in.
To top that off, here in the west, our forest have been devastated by pine beetle kill. That has done a real number on the pine, killing 1/2 of the trees. Thankfully, the spruce were hold up. Until now. Now, Spruce beetle is coming through with similar or same fungus that is killing them off.
So, rather than harvest these trees AND replant new ones (ideally resistant to the fungus or the beetles), our politicians simply ignore it.
We really need to push lots of new tree plants in our nation. At the same time, it is useful to take advantage of the resources. If we have dead trees, allow them to be harvested and turned into furniture, that can provide jobs,taxes, etc. Far better that, than spending taxes on firemen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Anyway, why would anyone who spends 90% of his waking hours staring at a telephone screen want trees anyway?
We had a large maple in the front yard, but the roots were getting into the sewer line and we had to take it down. The other trees are still fine, but still it is a net loss.
So zero studies have become zero studies?
How about this. If there's a lot of them, you could link, say, 5 studies for me. And they better be quality. Not some garbage where a lazy university psychology student stuck an ad on a lamp post at the university looking for people who want to talk about trees.
My job allows remote work, but the field business knowledge is highly specialised and i have 2 decades of experience in it (i am speaking if budiness analyze not dev). I have no doubt i am replaceable, but it would not be easy to outsource your core business analyst the other world side.
I moved to a big city because that's where the jobs are. Even in the moderately sized city I came from there wasn't shit for work. And the cost of living wasn't much lower either.
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"Cities"; "suburban"; "exurbs". You may want to work on your article there, guys - you start out talking about one thing, then your evidence points to something entirely different.
Almost as if you were writing a bullshit activist piece rather than actual science.
From my experience the biggest threat to urban trees are utility companies. I understand that they want to protect their infrastructure, but they destroy the trees and call it "maintenance". Put all power and telco lines underground in conduits that cannot be damaged by tree roots. That will cost a fortune, but I bet the ROI is rather high. I can't imagine that it is less expensive to have crews and equipment on hand to constantly fix toppled poles and cut back trees.
Another option is to go back to marking property lines with trees. I live in a neighborhood that was developed in the 1920s and on each corner of the properties is/was a tree. Not the most exact marker for property lines, but one that many appreciate. Trees keep water away from structures and give shade in the summer lowering AC cost. And they look nice.
Tax new construction that doesn't include greenery.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The loss of O2 in the cities lowers the cognitive abilities of city dwellers.
But we knew that about NYC people already.
They are experimenting with adding plants to the side of buildings in Dubai.
Uppsala, and many other cities, has destroyed every decent park in the city and built rental flats on them (tons of apartments are needed to accommodate the huge influx of people to Sweden). They put boxes of dirt on the roofs and says that that is the new parks and that "urban growing" is the next big thing. I just see massive future ghettoes...
Several years ago, I co-authored a book -- a photo history -- of the southern California community where I have lived for over 40 years. I reviewed old photographs of the area. I also recalled hiking over a hill into an adjacent empty valley that is now filled with houses.
The interesting thing about all this is that what used to be open meadows with widely spaced trees is now so filled with trees that distant views are blocked. Almost every house has at least one large tree. Many houses have several. I have three large trees on my property, which is about one-fifth of an acre. I also have five small or dwarf fruit trees.
My community is now completely built-out. Along the old water courses -- mostly intermittent creeks -- the land has been reserved as minimally-developed public parks with willows, cottonwoods, and centuries-old oaks. While the hill tops are public open spaces, they have no more trees than they had 50 years ago when development first started here.
The conclusion is that suburbanization does not necessarily eliminate trees. In my community, it very significantly increased the number of trees.
I had to cut down 65 trees on my Socal half acre because of CA drought - broke my heart because I planted them 20-30 years ago. Trees got diseased and couldn't fight back. Local authorities charge too much for water now so I can't afford to replace them.
That, however, would require a long term view of things. And since when have public companies every cared about long term results?