WiserEarth Governance

Benefits of Trees In Urban Areas

Trees are major capital assets in cities across the United States. Just as streets, sidewalks, public buildings and recreational facilities are a part of a community's infrastructure, so are publicly owned trees. Trees -- and, collectively, the urban forest -- are important assets that require care and maintenance the same as other public property. Trees are on the job 24 hours every day working for all of us to improve our environment and quality of life.

Colorado’s urban forest provides many environmental benefits to our community. Aside from the obvious aesthetic benefits, trees within our urban forest improve our air, protect our water, save energy, and improve economic sustainability.

Unlike urban areas in the eastern U.S., canopy cover in Colorado decreases along an urban to rural gradient. In other words, since most trees have been planted much of the tree cover is in urban areas as opposed to “natural lands”. Therefore, estimated pollutant uptake rates are higher for residential compared to natural or unmanaged lands. Possible management implications of these estimates are that air pollutant uptake benefits from tree planting may be optimized by planting in areas where air pollutant concentrations are elevated and where relatively high planting densities can be achieved thereby enhancing the health of urban dwellers.

Urban Forests Improve Our Air

Carbon Sequestration:

· Heat from Earth is trapped in the atmosphere due to high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases that prohibit it from releasing heat into space -- creating a phenomenon known as the "greenhouse effect." Trees remove (sequester) CO2 from the atmosphere during photosynthesis to form carbohydrates that are used in plant structure/function and return oxygen back to the atmosphere as a byproduct. About half of the greenhouse effect is caused by CO2. Trees therefore act as a carbon sink by removing the carbon and storing it as cellulose in their trunk, branches, leaves and roots while releasing oxygen back into the air.

· Trees also reduce the greenhouse effect by shading our homes and office buildings. This reduces air conditioning needs up to 30%, thereby reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce electricity. This combination of CO2 removal from the atmosphere, carbon storage in wood, and the cooling effect makes trees a very efficient tool in fighting the greenhouse effect. (11)

· One tree that shades your home in the city will also save fossil fuel, cutting CO2 buildup as much as 15 forest trees. (16)

· Approximately 800 million tons of carbon are stored in U.S. urban forests with a $22 billion equivalent in control costs. (1) · Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. (15)

· A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings. (10)

· Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year. A healthy tree stores about 13 pounds of carbon annually -- or 2.6 tons per acre each year. An acre of trees absorbs enough CO2 over one year to equal the amount produced by driving a car 26,000 miles. An estimate of carbon emitted per vehicle mile is between 0.88 lb. CO2/mi. – 1.06 lb. CO2/mi. (Nowak, 1993). Thus, a car driven 26,000 miles will emit between 22,880 lbs CO2 and 27,647 lbs. CO2. Thus, one acre of tree cover in Brooklyn can compensate for automobile fuel use equivalent to driving a car between 7,200 and 8,700 miles. (8)

· If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year. (17)

· The U.S. Forest Service estimates that all the forests in the United States combined sequestered a net of approximately 309 million tons of carbon per year from 1952 to 1992, offsetting approximately 25% of U.S. human-caused emissions of carbon during that period.

· Over a 50-year lifetime, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion. (2)

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