User:Danimilkweed/Urban reforestation

What is Urban Reforestation?

Urban reforestation is the practice of planting trees, typically on a large scale, in urban environments. It may also include urban horticulture and urban farming. Urban reforestation also includes urban forests in general, which provide ecosystem services that humans benefit off of. Urban reforestation has become of significancy in recent urban development initiatives for mitigating the effects of global warming such as the urban heat island effect, climate change adaptation, as well as providing physical and mental health benefits for urban residents. Urban canopies act as carbon sinks not only provide health benefits to us and our planet, but they also provide a home for greater biodiversity in concrete jungles. Urban reforestation programs have been implemented in various countries around the world, but it has more notably been a success in wealthier areas and nations that continue to prove to be an environmental injustice. Today, many urban reforestation programs consider giving out trees and educating the public of their benefits in urban settings as well as how to properly foster healthy trees as a way to improve the urban canopy on a community level.

Benefits

Reasons for practicing urban reforestation include urban beautification; increasing shade; modifying the urban climate; improving air quality, such as by sequestering carbon dioxide; and restoration of urban forests after a natural disaster. By increasing the amount of tree coverage in a neighborhood or city, the home/ property value increases. Urban reforestation can be seen as an investment with multiple flows of benefits reeling in for the present and future. Reforesting an area with little to no tree coverage will require the essential materials (trees, soil, shoveling supplies) as well as management for these trees over the course of their lifetime to ensure the health of the tree as well as the safety of the nearby stakeholders. Increased shade from urban reforestation can also lead to decreased energy costs, as heat from the sun is blocked from heating structures that use air conditioning. These benefits may aid in increasing local property values, filtering rainwater pollutants from the streets and thus improving water quality, and creating more habitats for wildlife, particularly endangered species. Urban reforestation provides local scale benefits compared to major reforestation projects, but the benefits reach more people within cities such as parks and other localized planting that have greatly benefitted the human's mental health (as we witnessed during the COVID-19 Pandemic). Localized initiatives provide localized benefits for the ecosystem, environment, climate, and human health

Urban reforestation may also be effective because it does not require the purchase of a large piece of land to execute. Urban reforestation comes in various size scales, from a reforestation project the size of Central Park, New York, to simply planting one tree on one's private property. Every tree added to an urban system's canopy boosts the aesthetics, homes wildlife, and enhances ecosystem services necessary for the better quality of living in a city where natural landscapes are less common and susceptible to overexploitation. Im some cases, the privately owned trees outnumber the amount of publicly (city) owned trees that make up the urban canopy.

Case Studies, Methods, and Successes Globally

Australia

The Urban Reforestation organization in Australia is a grassroots organization that focuses on sustainable living in urban places.

United States

Large scale urban reforestation programs in the United States include New York City's Million Tree Initiative and TreePeople in Los Angeles, which planted 1 million trees in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics and continued planting thereafter. In 2022, Boston announced a new forestry division to grow the tree canopy within the city.

Grassroots efforts include Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco, which advocates for the planting of street trees.

In California, there are government funded programs such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Urban Forestry Program. They advocate for local sustainability as well as health and happiness for the community long term. This Urban Forestry Program also seeks to aid disadvantaged and/or low-income communities.

In Fort Lauderdale, Texas, a tree giveaway program was conducted taking into account various factors in an effort to promote urban reforestation in underserved communities. this program was conducted surveying the various participants' backgrounds; i.e. their zip code, race, ethnicity, income, residence type, tree type preference, program awareness, and accessibility to the tree/program. Their complex methods were set to provide insight on the environmental justice, community outreach, consumer demand, cooperative governance, and socio-ecological barriers. By receiving this data, the program was able to come to various conclusions, such as how White/ Caucasians, the more educated, and the wealthier categories all had greater participation in the program, as well as indicating the kind of trees they chose/preferred (native trees). Hispanic/Latinos ranked the lowest when it came to the knowledge of the program, but still had greater participation than lower incomes and African American/black residents. Their data also suggests that they are more inclined to take part in the tree giveaway program when they get a say in the kind of tree they receive (fruit-giving trees were preferred) as well as utility rebate, delivery of tree, and no proof of residency. Overall, the lower income participants preferred less barriers on receiving the tree, having a say in the kind of tree, and a small reimbursement for the initial management of the tree. This data helps understand the demands of the targeted communities to result in their highest participation outcome and provides a model for future tree giveaways and their effectiveness and equal access.

In a small town called Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where strong winds and severe weather devastated the area, the reconstruction of the town needed to regain the significant percentage of their urban canopy that they had lost. With the use of GIS systems to monitor the greatest loss of of trees, they created an equitable model to emphasize replanting native trees in their suitable habitat. In their plan to replant the whole city within the span of 10 years, one goal was to keep the ecosystem interconnected as well as supporting the trees through close planting of trees, just how they'd be in a natural forest. This supports trees through root connectivity that provides a nutrient and information sharing network while holding the trees strongly together against climate factors.

India

The effects of climate change are felt all over the world. In India, urbanization has been linked to threatening urban forests and its ecosystems, causing fragmentation, loss of biodiversity, and increased water and air pollution. In this study, they concluded that open forest land, caused by anthropogenic causes, continues to degrade with the lack of protections set in place. With human activity already in place in the area, the probability of further degradation is eminent for the existing forest areas in later times. This site lacked herbivores and other grazers due to the low vegetation, exemplifying the need for urban reforestation in circumstances like this where overexploitation harms the natural ecosystem services and biodiversity. Some areas, however, thrived with other unique animals such as the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) which is under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Challenges in the city

Urban reforestation efforts compete for money and urban land that could be used for other purposes. For example, effort placed in planting new trees can take away from maintenance of already established trees. Equity of where urban reforestation occurs may also be questioned. Programs such as California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Urban Forestry target these communities, but this is not always the case. Inequality in distribution of trees planted during Urban Reforestation leads to inequality of life. Permanence of trees is also an issue as a tree planted is a tree that might have to be removed in the future due to preferences of land owners in urban spaces.

Urban reforestation projects may also lack support in neighborhoods where environmentalist groups do not sufficiently involve residents in planning and decision-making, particularly when white environmentalists are conducting projects in communities of color, as noted in a 2014 report by environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor from the University of Michigan. For example, from 2011 to 2014, a nonprofit organization named The Greening of Detroit planted thousands of new trees to restore Detroit's tree canopy. However, about a quarter of residents offered free trees in front of their homes submitted a "no tree request". Although they recognized the benefits of urban forestry, they didn't trust the organization staff, who were predominantly white and not from Detroit. They also felt that they didn't have enough say in what was being planted since they expected to be given responsibility for maintaining the trees planted in their neighborhoods, as previous reforestation project trees received inadequate care from the city and caused issues with appearance and safety. Residents were a lot more open to the idea of receiving free trees if they got to choose what was planted (proven by Fort Lauderdale's reforestation surveys and responses).

In a case study done in Toronto, Canada ,for industrial urban reforestation efforts, some key features needed to take into consideration were the vegetation types (both native and nonnative residing on the site) as well as soil health and features, and hydrologic features. Nonnative species have proven to providing benefits to the ecosystem, but it also graudally destroys the food web.It becomes a challenge for developers to obtain the knowledge due to the already modified environment and ecosystem. Apart from this, disconnectedness within these communities hinder the growth of native populations thus creating an unsuitable and unsustainable ecosystem.

Climate Change

Most cities have the potential to use urban reforestation as a means of combating climate change. Urban reforestation can also contribute to lowering energy consumption. Adding on to the environmental struggles that climate change sets on resources, urban reforestation is a cheaper alternative (and natural) to improving the quality of water by preventing an increase in runoff from urban and agricultural sources.

Across the United States, urban trees have been proven to be an adaptation mechanism to our climate and pollution problems hindering urban areas. The ratio for pollution emission to carbon sequestration is distinctively high, making carbon offsets rather insignificant by urban tree growth. It is only about 0-3% annually just considering the plant services, not including the energy used in management. Cities with urban trees have been proven a significant temperature drop of 3 degrees Celcius compared to cities where they are deprived of trees. Having a greater tree canopy, whether it is at parks, private homes, or urban gathering areas, create a microclimate necessary for the comfortability of living in changing conditions as climate change continues to influence weather patterns.

Environmental Justice

Urban forestry has mostly been present in urban areas where the abundant resources necessary have been invested for the benefit of the community. On a local scale, the areas more fortunate to home urban forestry have been linked to be in zip codes where property values are high as well as the salaries of those residents. The accessibility to knowledge of the benefits with urban forestry incentivizes cities and homeowners alike to invest in enhancing the canopy. Having the access to money, land, and permission to insight reforestation efforts provides the access to the benefits that come along with it.

On the other hand, we have communities whose dynamics differ from those just described. On a large scale, this can be seen as how wealthy first world countries such as the United States of America fund projects within their lands for the greater benefit of their ecosystems. Countries less fortunate, having to rely more on raw materials for GDP, are not at that level where they can invest their funds into cleaning up their environment, mitigating climate effects, and focusing on natural remedies to urban health. Whether it is small scale or large, economics disproportionately determine who is able to afford the benefits that come with urban greenery, but urban reforestation in needed communities bridges the gap necessary for environmental justice.

Here is a website to an organization "One Tree Planted" funded to ensure enviornmental justice in the efforts of enhancing environmental justice through various countries around the world.[1]