planted city

From The Globe & Mail:

This fall, Vancouver city workers will start planting some 3,000 trees, the first of the planned 150,000 called for in the city’s 2011 Greenest City Action Plan.

The cost for the first batch of trees – to be planted on both private and city-owned land – is $650,000 of the city’s budget of about $1-billion. The investment is geared to more than shade and eye appeal. Vancouver, like other cities around the world, is looking to its urban forest for benefits ranging from energy savings to pollution control.

While such benefits have long been acknowledged, technology is making it easier to measure them – in the process, helping to build a business case for greenery.

“It’s getting easier to quantify the environmental services provided by trees, because there are programs that we have been able to plug into that give us that information,” said Beth McEwen, manager of urban forest renewal with the City of Toronto, which in 2005 announced plans to boost its tree canopy from about 20 per cent to 40 per cent over the next 50 years.

Toronto used i-Tree – software developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service – for a 2010 report, Every Tree Counts, which mapped the city’s tree cover and calculated what role trees played in, for example, reducing air pollution. Vancouver will be testing the software this fall, but has not done a cost-benefit analysis of its tree-planting target. Still, the city considers it a solid investment.

“There are social and economic benefits – including cleaner air, habitat for wildlife, increased property values and neighbourhood pride, to name a few,” Ms. Blyth said.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo: Open File)

Four paragraphs from the Global Footprint Network’s article, ‘August 22 is Earth Overshoot Day’. You can read and learn more here, including about your own ecological footprint and responses to this predicament including examples of cities, countries, and businesses that are transitioning to ‘one planet living’. The BedZed neighbourhood in the UK is one well known example.  

Related:

• Jeffrey Sachs: ‘A Global Solutions Network’ (Project Syndicate)
• Tools for Change: ‘Smart Environmental Policy with Full-Cost Pricing’ (Video)
• ‘The Real Barriers to Sustainability’ (UBC Sustainability Initiative)
• Study: ‘Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: The evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions, and technologies’ (PDF)

(Infographic source: Global Footprint Network)

From Science Daily:

Earth’s oceans, forests and other ecosystems continue to soak up about half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, even as those emissions have increased, according to a study by University of Colorado and NOAA scientists published August 1 in the journal Nature.

…

Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere mainly by fossil fuel combustion but also by forest fires and some natural processes. The gas can also be pulled out of the atmosphere into the tissues of growing plants or absorbed by the waters of Earth’s oceans. A series of recent studies suggested that natural sinks of carbon dioxide might no longer be keeping up with the increasing rate of emissions. If that were to happen, it would cause a faster-than-expected rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and projected climate change impacts.

Ballantyne, Tans and their colleagues saw no faster-than-expected rise, however. Their estimate showed that overall, oceans and natural ecosystems continue to pull about half of people’s carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere. Since emissions of CO₂ have increased substantially since 1960, Ballantyne said, “Earth is taking up twice as much CO₂ today as it was 50 years ago.”

The rest continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, where it is likely to accelerate global warming.

This new global analysis makes it clear that scientists do not yet understand well enough the processes by which ecosystems of the world are removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, or the relative importance of possible sinks: regrowing forests on different continents, for example, or changing absorption of carbon dioxide by various ocean regions.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related: 

• ‘Study Shows Planet Keeping Pace With CO2 Emissions’ (Climate Central)
• ‘Infographic: The Carbon Bathtub’ (National Geographic)

(Carbon cycle graphic: NOAA)

Extreme weather: ”Epic dryness’ feeding Western wildfires’

From USA Today:

In the Rocky Mountain West, firefighters say they’ve never seen the trees and grasses this dry so early in the summer.

“It’s epic dryness,” says Beth Lund, leader of the incident management team assigned to the High Park Fire, which has burned 135 square miles near Fort Collins, Colo., and destroyed at least 257 homes. It is now the most destructive in recorded Colorado history.

But hardly the only one. Ten separate fires are burning in Colorado, prompting a planned visit Friday by President Obama. They threaten the U.S. Air Force Academy, the town of Boulder and the city of Colorado Springs.

Colorado isn’t the only state affected by an exceptionally severe fire season, with crews battling blazes in Alaska, Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

“The whole Central Rocky Mountain range is a tinderbox,” says Ron Roth, of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordinating Center in Lakewood, Colo.

A light winter snow pack, dry spring, more people living in what was once wilderness and the long-term effects of climate change have all conspired to make this an especially bad fire season, Roth says. “We’ve got trees torching, tornadoes of fire — this is extreme fire behavior,” he says.

…

Climate change is undoubtedly playing a role, if only in the distribution of invasive insects, Delgado says. The pine bark beetle has been migrating north for years as warmer winters allow it to survive outside its previous range. The insects have killed millions of acres of forest, leaving behind tinder-dry wood.

“When that timber goes dead, it doesn’t make for a real good situation when the fire comes,” Bently says.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘West’s wildfires a preview of changed climate: scientists’ (Reuters)
• ‘Climate change will boost number of West’s wildfires’ (Reuters)

(Map credit: NASA via Yale e360) 

From Crosscut:

Sandwiched between 15th Ave. S. and the play fields at the SW edge of Jefferson Park in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle are seven acres of lonely, sloping lawn that have sat idly in the hands of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for the better part of a century. At least until this spring, when the land that has only ever known the whirring steel of city mowers will begin a complete transformation into seven acres of edible landscape and community park space known as the Beacon Food Forest.

The end goal is an urban oasis of public food: Visitors to the corner of 15th Ave S. and S. Dakota Street will be greeted by a literal forest — an entire acre will feature large chestnuts and walnuts in the overstory, full-sized fruit trees like big apples and mulberries in the understory, and berry shrubs, climbing vines, herbaceous plants, and vegetables closer to the ground.

Further down the path an edible arboretum full of exotic looking persimmons, mulberries, Asian pears, and Chinese haws will surround a sheltered classroom for community workshops. Looking over the whole seven acres, you’ll see playgrounds and kid space full of thornless mini edibles adjacent to community gardening plots, native plant areas, a big timber-frame gazebo and gathering space with people barbecuing, a recreational field, and food as far as you can see.

The entire project will be built around the concept of permaculture — an ecological design system, philosophy, and set of ethics and principles used to create perennial, self-sustaining landscapes and settlements that build ecological knowledge and skills in communities. The concept of a food forest is a core concept of permaculture design derived from wild food ecosystems, where land often becomes forest if left to its own devices. In a food forest, everything from the tree canopy to the roots is edible or useful in some way.

“If this is successful,” explains Margarett Harrison, the lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest, “it is going to set such a precedent for the city of Seattle, and for the whole Northwest.”

She may be understating it. There is no other project of Beacon Food Forest’s scale and design on public land in the United States — a forest of food, for the people, by the people.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Crosscut)

From The CBC:

A new NASA study predicts massive ecological changes for Canada’s Prairies and boreal regions by the year 2100.

Those areas are in “hot spots” highly vulnerable to massive environmental changes this century due to global warming, the study states.

Much of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba is predicted to see major shifts northward of plant and animal species.

“By about 2100, the climate change projections that we have today would suggest that there would be pressure on that grassland so prevalent in [the Canadian Prairies] to move further northward — and at the expense of the forest moving further northward as well,” said NASA climate scientist Duane Walliser, who spoke with CBC News from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Walliser said that all across the globe, whole ecological zones such as deserts and tundra will be on the move because of “unprecedented” warming at a pace faster than at any time in 10,000 years.

But Western Canada will be among the areas hardest hit.

A map of the globe on the NASA study shows much the Prairies in bright red “hot spots” of ecological stress, where 100 per cent of the landscape is predicted to see major changes in plant species.

…

The NASA study says 37 per cent of Earth’s land surface will transform from one major ecosystem zone, or biome, into another, while 49 per cent of land surfaces will see at least some changes in plant species.

Bergengren said some wildlife will not survive these transformations.

“Obviously, it is much easier for plants and animals to migrate or adapt to this level of climatic change over 10,000 years than it is over 100 years,” he said.

Check out the rest of the article here. You may also be interested in the recent study that found Canada’s ’Boreal ducks threatened by climate change’.

(Image credit: NASA; Photo credit: CBC)

Intact Forests: Natural ecosystems relatively undisturbed by human activity.

Fragmented Forests: Forests disturbed by roads, logging or other human activity.

From the New York Times:

The world’s 9.9 billion acres of forest absorb roughly a quarter of human emissions of carbon dioxide, and help limit the increase of the gas in the atmosphere. While many healthy forests are robustly absorbing carbon, others are threatened by a warming climate.

The infographic accompanies the article, ‘With Deaths of Forests,  a Loss of Crucial Climate Protectors’.

From Triple Pundit:

Urbanization and going back to nature seem like incompatible concepts, but there’s a body of evidence that says increasing migration to cities has definite environmental benefits.

An obvious one is that living close to, or even where you work takes cars off the road and reduces CO2 emissions.

Also, as people increasingly move to urban centers, pressure on global forests eases. Because forests double as the planet’s lungs, they are a natural and effective answer to sequestering carbon emissions. The more those particular lungs can hold, the better.

A study published last month by Science, suggests the world’s forests are doing better than anticipated, and the reason for that is traced to increased urban living.

The study, led by U.S. Forest Service researcher Yude Pan (and cited by The New York Times’ Green blog), found the world’s established forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or about a third of the total released by burning fossil fuels.

Pan says the study is the most comprehensive analysis of the global carbon budget to date, showing that forests are a far more significant carbon sink than previously thought. At the same time, the report emphasizes the devastating effects of tropical deforestation and the need to protect trees that perform an enormous global service.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Debate Your Plate)

Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s short film, ‘Of Forests and Men’

From the United Nations: 

Yann Arthus-Bertrand was appointed by the United Nations to produce the official film for the International Year of Forests. Following the success of Home which was seen by 400 million people, the photographer began producing a short 7-minute film on forests made up of aerial images from Home and the Earth from Above television programmes. This film was shown during a plenary session of the Ninth Session of United Nations Forum on Forests (24 January - 4 February 2011) in New York.

The film is narrated by American actor Ed Norton.

From the CBC:

The world’s forests take up roughly a third of the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels each year.

But deforestation in the tropics sends about half that amount — equivalent to a sixth of global fossil fuel emissions — back into the atmosphere, reported a study by an international team of government and university researchers published Wednesday in Science.

Emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are linked to climate change, including an increase in global temperatures. Through the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, many countries committed to trying to reduce emissions and climate change, and the resultant negative impacts, such as extreme weather and rising sea levels.

“Right now, forests are helping,” he said, “but whether or not they will continue to help in the future will depend on the effect of human activities and climate change on the forest.”

Werner Kurz, a scientist with Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Forest Service who co-authored the paper, said the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by forests is “good news” and reinforces what scientists had previously estimated — that forests are the biggest carbon sinks among land ecosystems.

The amount of carbon taken in by the forests, 2.4 billion tonnes a year, is almost identical to the amount that scientists had previously estimated are taken up by all land ecosystems.

Kurz said that suggests other ecosystems, such as prairies, wetlands and tundra, don’t make a net contribution to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While individual components may be carbon sources or sinks, they all add up to zero.

“It reinforces that of the land ecosystems, it is the forests that are currently the biggest sinks,” he said. “If they stop that uptake, then the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will greatly increase.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: National Geographic)