They keep urban neighborhoods cooler, make air conditioning bills manageable and, most importantly, protect lives during heat waves. They help capture stormwater runoff and, as trees grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the air that traps heat. Trees offer significant public health benefits, starting with the refreshing shade they provide. A study published last year in the journal Environmental Epidemiology found that heat causes thousands of excess deaths in the United States each year, well above official estimates.
City and state leaders expect climate change to worsen the threat. Trees help design safe roads. They have been shown to reduce average driving speeds. In medium sizes, they reduce the possibility of frontal collisions.
A row of trees can also provide a clear demarcation of pedestrian areas, creating a visual wall that helps keep drivers on the road. Residents of areas with more trees and other green spaces know their neighbors better, socialize more often, have a stronger sense of community, and feel safer and better adapted. Trees in cities provide health, employment and climate resilience benefits that everyone should have. They help meet our basic needs, such as breathing fresh air and drinking clean water.
Trees also cool neighborhoods, reducing heat-related illnesses and utility costs, and generating wealth by creating career opportunities related to trees. Like buildings, streets and sewer lines, trees are a fundamental infrastructure that improves our quality of life. Trees and other plants help cool the environment, making vegetation a simple and effective way to reduce urban heat islands. We provide best forest practices based on climate change to determine which trees to plant, where to plant them and how to care for them.
Therefore, the soil around the root systems of trees must be protected so that it cannot be walked on using tree grids, plantations or short fences, depending on space considerations. Even in cities with strong tree-planting programs, leaders have found that they continue to lose coverage every year as urban expansion and development uproot existing trees to make way for housing. Use this literature review to learn more about how tree cover is associated with improving human health in multiple capacities, especially with the proper selection of trees. It is because of the power of urban trees that makes it wise to install them carefully and intentionally.
Many cities and states are also reevaluating what types of trees to plant, as changing conditions caused by climate change alter long-held ideas about which trees will thrive in a given region.
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