| Home | Gateways | Academics | Admission | Directories | Site Index | SEARCH: |
Urban Forests - Part One
Going Green
Going Green: Urban Forests - Part One
Over my shoulder is a great view of the city. You see large buildings that create a distinctive city skyline, roadways from busy interstates to residential side streets, and forest.
That's right an urban forest, thousands of trees. Woods scattered around the city in parks and natural areas, trees along the streets, and trees in the thousands of residential backyards, and these trees are extremely valuable.
“People view the trees from an aesthetics point of view and they see the shade and enjoy the beauty of the forest but it's the physiological functions that the trees have, the gas exchange that transpires water which cools the air and the leaf surface provides such benefits as carbon sequestration as the tree grows,” said David Nowak, U.S. Forest Service.
Dave Nowak of the U.S. Forest Service says as trees grow they take in carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide produced by the cars and trucks driving on all those streets and highways.Another big one is air pollution removal. Besides temperature reduction from trees transpiring that water, evaporating the water making it cooler - when they do that they open what are called stomata in the bottom of leaves which allows gas to get inside the leave surface and a lot of air pollutants move inside the leaf surface and are dissolved in the leaf surface.
Air pollutants like ozone, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide. Another benefit is energy conservation.
You plant trees around buildings, you shade them and cool them and that can reduce energy use in the summertime that can reduce energy use but here in New York State the other issue is in the wintertime. In leaf, trees can block 70-90% of solar radiation while out of leaf they still block 30-40% so if you shade the south side of your building you can influence your heating use.
So more and more communities are paying closer attention to the design of their urban forest.
