`Super trees' may help save Houston ... and beyond
Live oaks, sycamores top ranking of trees that mitigate effects of
pollution, climate change

Date:
December 9, 2021
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Statisticians are sharing strategies to identify 'super trees'
for urban areas that help mitigate pollution, flooding and heat.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
It's easy to say "just plant more trees" to mitigate air pollution. But
how? Where? And what kind?

==========================================================================
A new study by collaborators at Rice University, the Houston Health Department's environmental division and Houston Wilderness establishes
live oaks and American sycamores as champions among 17 "super trees"
that will help make the city more livable and lays out a strategy to
improve climate and health in vulnerable urban areas.

Best of all for Houston, they're already implementing their plan in the
city, and now offer what they've learned to others.

The open access study in the journal Plants People Planet -- led by
Houston Wilderness President Deborah January-Bevers and colleagues at Rice
and in city government -- lays out a three-part framework for deciding
what trees are the right ones to plant, how to identify places where
planting will have the highest impact and how to engage with community leadership to make the planting project a reality.

Using Houston as a best-case example, the collaborators determined
what trees would work best in the city based on their ability to soak
up carbon dioxide and other pollutants, drink in water, stabilize the
landscape during floods and provide a canopy to mitigate heat.

With that information, the organizers ultimately identified a site to test their ideas. With cooperation from the city and nonprofit and corporate landowners, they planted 7,500 super trees on several sites near the
Clinton Park neighborhood and adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel. (They actually planted 14 species, eliminating those that bear fruit to simplify maintenance for the landowners.) Along with planting native trees,
the partners conducted a tree inventory and removed invasive species.



==========================================================================
All of that took advance planning, and that's where Rice's statisticians
-- in line with the university's Vision for the Second Century, Second
Decade goal for community engagement -- helped narrow the options.

Rice alumna Laura Campos, a data scientist in the Department of
Statistics, was brought into the project by Loren Hopkins, who serves
double duty as a professor in the practice of statistics, environmental analysis at Rice and as chief environmental science officer for the city
of Houston.

Co-author Erin Caton of the city's health department organized data that allowed the team to establish overall rankings for the super trees and
their wannabes.

For her part, Campos gathered the wealth of data Rice has collected in
the past decade linking health and pollution in Houston, creating maps
that showed where mass plantings would have the most impact.

"These maps help people understand that their little pocket neighborhoods
are connected to the bigger picture," Campos said. "They help us bring in
all the players to get them to realize how everything is interconnected
and how public health can benefit with every step forward." Ranking the species' talents to soak up pollutants, provide flood mitigation and cool "urban heat islands" helped them eliminate most of the 54 native trees
they evaluated. Ultimately, they narrowed the list to 17 super trees,
with live oakand American sycamore on top.



==========================================================================
Live oaks were No. 1 for their ability to soak up pollutants across
the board.

The No. 2 sycamore was less able to pull in carbon but excelled at
grabbing other pollutants, flood remediation and reducing heat on the
ground with its wide canopy.

The study addresses how such strategic groves can contribute to human
health initiatives and took into account an earlier Rice study by Campos, Hopkins and Katherine Ensor, the Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics,
that established how pollution in Houston causes preventable asthma
attacks in schoolchildren.

That and a Rice study with the city linking Houston ozone levels to
cardiac arrests helped the tree team make its case for the project.

"They took their health care data and overlapped it with our section
map, and it was really compelling," January-Bevers said. "That's what we
wanted to concentrate on first because these are areas right up against
plants along the ship channel." Some super trees -- particularly live
oak, American sycamore, red maple and laurel oak -- are adept at pulling
ozone, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and particular
matter 2.5 microns and smaller from the air. That helps determine where
they can be deployed to have maximum impact on neighborhood health.

"We're still running the program, with over 15,000 native super trees
now planted along the ship channel, and it's incredibly popular," January-Bevers said, crediting Hopkins with the push to issue a study that could help other communities. "It's benefiting our city in regions that
are critical for air quality, water absorption and carbon sequestration." Hopkins said the contribution by Rice -- a "Tree Campus USA" and an
arboretum in its own right -- was important in setting a tree-ranking
method that could influence environmental strategies just as well in
other cities.

"The meaningful planting of trees is a vital aspect of this study but it
should not overshadow the main objective of directly connecting climate
to health," Hopkins said.

"This project proves that engaging people from various sectors
leads to innovative strategies to address climate change,"
she said. "Ultimately, these types of collaborations must
extend into corporate board rooms to make a substantial impact." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Rice_University. Original written
by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Trees_that_mitigate_effects_of_pollution,_climate_change ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Loren P. Hopkins, Deborah J. January‐Bevers, Erin K. Caton,
Laura
A. Campos. A simple tree planting framework to improve climate,
air pollution, health, and urban heat in vulnerable locations
using non‐traditional partners. PLANTS, PEOPLE, PLANET,
2021; DOI: 10.1002/ppp3.10245 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211209201458.htm

--- up 5 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)