I am a tree hugger (1/23/2021)

Of all the environmental news and stories that came out last year there was one that has stayed with me. Regular readers know that I am a huge student and lover of trees. OK, you can even call me a tree hugger! When I walk in the woods there is nothing better than petting the occasional tree with my bare hands, or just laying my hands on the trunk and enjoying my connection with the wood, the tree, and by way of its vascular and root system with the earth; the entire world around me. 

In winter, I enjoy looking up in the canopy of trees and look at the branching.  This helps me in my studies for the development of my bonsai, but also just the enjoyment of the simple beauty and majesty. 

But that is not necessarily what I want to write about today. In the department that we work, we have bi-monthly climate change webinars, and sometime mid-2020 we had a talk by Dr. Jeremy Hoffman climatologist from the Virginia Science Museum in Richmond about how urban treescapes modified the urban climate. More specifically, he had studied how city sections where minorities live had fewer trees and parks then Caucasian neighborhoods. These African American neighborhoods were much warmer during the summer which resulted in heat related 911 (or emergency/ambulance) calls. Now here I was looking at the year end review in the New York Times and they showed to 10 most important articles of 2020 and there it was, an article on this specific research. Here is the link to this article. They did another article about it earlier.

While I promised not to bother you all about politics in my blogs as much as I have done in the past 4 years, the issue in Richmond and many other large cities goes back many years. It is known as environmental justice. Environmental justice is very closely aligned with racism and economic justice, where the poor and minorities were delt the short end of the stick. They lived closer to the pollution generating area; the areas that were cheaper to live in; across the tracks as it is called. They could not afford high rent, health care, the electricity to cool or heat their homes. There you have it, heat related illnesses because of the lack of trees in the summer, including asthma because trees also scrub the air.

It still amazes me to see in this neighborhood where I live, how eager newcomers are to cut the trees in their yards around their homes (even today I could hear the whining of the chainsaws), in the pursuit of, I am not sure what. More sun, the perfect lawn, more exposure and heat in the summer, more wind, and even lower temperatures in winter? Yes, having a yard full of trees is a pain. We have a lot of leaves in fall and no sun any longer for a decent vegetable garden, and my bonsais. I previously wrote about my gripe over the eagerness that some of the folks here have about leaf disposal and tree killing. 

This tree had split in two exposing this inner wood.  It shows that vascular system that connects the upper part of the tree (and me when I touch the tree) with the earth.  I just love the vein pattern.

But even planting a young tree or a smaller species in place of the old majestic one they just nuked really does not help. A lawn or a young, small tree are so much less efficient in fixing carbon out of the air and thus reducing CO2 than large mature trees. In addition, my bike and car both have a temperature gauge on them, and we can see the difference when we go from our yard down to the primary school less than a mile away, which has absolutely no tree around it. In summer, the temperatures are easily 5 or more degrees higher than in my wooded front yard. In winter, when the thermometer reads 32 degrees (or freezing), the windshields of my cars may not need scraping while the neighbor’s cars are frosted over.

Concluding trees are not only good for the soul, but they also help in moderating the microclimate around your home, they are good for the climate as a whole, and they provide great habitat for all kinds of critters, be it up there or in the fallen leaves. In other words, become a tree hugger.