{"id":16189,"date":"2019-04-27T04:40:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T04:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=16189"},"modified":"2019-04-28T10:03:56","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T10:03:56","slug":"the-value-of-trees-4-essential-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-value-of-trees-4-essential-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"The value of trees: 4 essential reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Weeks<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Trees are leafing out across much of the United States, providing a welcome transition from winter to spring. It\u2019s easy to take this annual process for granted, but scholarship shows that trees provide all kinds of value. And we certainly miss them when they\u2019re gone. Here are four expert takes on ways in which trees enrich our lives.<\/p>\n

1. Cooling and greening city streets<\/h2>\n

Trees weren\u2019t always part of urban landscapes. The first major tree-planting campaign in the U.S. launched in New York City in the 1870s, led by physician Stephen Smith, who believed that planting trees could save lives by providing shade during heat waves. <\/p>\n

It took several decades to win support from the state legislature, but other wealthy New Yorkers joined the cause. In 1897 they started forming committees to plant trees in front of homes, tenement blocks and public schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor these early activists planting trees was a way to cool streets and buildings in the summer<\/a> and beautify the city\u2019s gritty urban landscape,\u201d observes Harvard University landscape architecture professor Sonja D\u00fcmpelmann. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnly later would scientists come to realize the enormous potential that urban trees besides entire forests held in mitigating the effects of climate change.\u201d <\/p>\n

2. Holding down the Great Plains<\/h2>\n

Planting trees was so central to the mission of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s that this New Deal agency was nicknamed \u201cRoosevelt\u2019s Tree Army.\u201d The CCC was designed to put young men to work during the Great Depression on tasks that President Franklin Roosevelt stated would be \u201cof definite, practical value.\u201d<\/p>\n

With dust storms ravaging the Great Plains, soil conservation was one such mission. CCC members planted some 3 billion trees in U.S. national forests and a \u201cshelter belt\u201d that stretched from North Dakota south to Texas, holding vulnerable soil in place. They also reseeded U.S. national forests across the country.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Alexander, a historian at the City University of New York, sees the CCC as a predecessor of the modern conservation movement<\/a>: <\/p>\n

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\u201cAlthough it is hard to picture a CCC-style initiative winning political support today, some of its ideas still resonate. Notably, the Obama administration\u2019s economic stimulus plan and some proposals for upgrading U.S. infrastructure present federal spending on projects that benefit society as a legitimate way to stimulate economic growth. The CCC combined that strategy with the idea that America\u2019s natural resources should be protected so that everyone could enjoy them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Civilian Conservation Corps members planting red pine seedlings in upper Michigan\u2019s Hiawatha National Forest.<\/span>
\n USFS<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3. Improving urban air and water quality<\/h2>\n

Today many city planners see trees as valuable investments. Theodore Endreny, a professor of engineering at the State University of New York\u2019s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, wanted to put a dollar figure on that value, so he and his research team calculated it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrees clean the air and water, reduce stormwater floods, improve building energy use and mitigate climate change, among other things,\u201d Endreny writes. \u201cFor every dollar invested in planting, cities see an average US$2.25 return on their investment each year<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group developed a free software package called i-Tree Tools<\/a> that can estimate how trees will help to mitigate flooding, air pollution, building energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in a specific community. They found that trees provide especially large benefits in megacities like Beijing, Cairo and Mexico City, each of which house more than 10 million people. And all of these cities, even the leafiest of them, had the potential to add more trees.<\/p>\n

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