Columnist sees unwelcome parallels between local tree protection efforts and federal health care bill; Boulder, CO

Greenlee: Control freaks? - Boulder Daily Camera:
A number of local citizens qualify as devoted 'tree huggers.' There`s nothing wrong with a fondness for trees although the moniker implies something beyond simply enjoying our deciduous and non-deciduous companions.
Like so many other things in Boulder there`s a propensity to go far beyond enjoying something and instead wanting to control, possess, and legislate preferred behavior even when it comes to things like trees. According to a recent city staff memo, trees 'have environmental, social, and economic benefits' as defined in both the Comprehensive Plan and an over-ambitious Climate Action Plan. It appears a new health care plan for trees is in the works that will likely involve providing universal arbor care with a public option and a network of required caregivers who will likely impose a single-payer system passing all bills along to taxpayers. Sound familiar?
Some of our leafy companions may even qualify as being 'historic landmarks.' But first, according to a 40-page memo to Boulder`s Planning Board and City Council, a comprehensive inventory of city trees needs to be undertaken. This includes performing a comprehensive tree canopy survey, developing a new Geographical Information System Database along with a Database Management Program administered by a new Information Resources Working Group. Unfortunately the costs associated with implementing these new ventures were not provided in the memo.

Task Force focuses on urban forest in development of climate action strategy; Redlands, CA

Task Force urges alternative transportation - Redlands Daily Facts:
The Climate Action Task Force may be able to help Redlands reduce its carbon emissions.
The group addresses how the city can do this in its Climate Action and Sustainability Plan. The Storing and Offsetting Carbon Emissions and the Efficient Transportation subcommittees made recommendations to help this goal along.
The first of the two subcommittees looked at easy ways the city could help minimize Redlands' carbon emissions.
'Our main focus revolved around the urban forest,' said Dan Rendler, chair of the Storing and Offsetting Carbon Emissions subcommittee. 'That's making the right selection of trees in the city so we aren't letting greenhouse gasses out.'

Sorsogon vice gov recommends forest farming vs climate change; Sorsogon, Phillipines

Sorsogon vice gov recommends forest farming vs climate change « SORSOGON UNITED:
The vice governor of Sorsogon province where the vast forest areas are confronted with rapid deterioration due to natural and man-made destruction is pushing forest farming as an effective measure to avert the negative impacts of climate change in the locality.
“Through forest farming, we would be able to have economic gains from the forest we nourish while contributing to the global effort of solving the problem on global warming,” Vice Governor Renato Laurinaria told the Philippines News Agency at his mini-forest farm here over the weekend.
“The signs of global warming that indicate we are now in the midst of it are already ominous as we feel the immediate effects of global warming through the climatic changes that make our summers hotter while the typhoons during the rainy season are increasingly getting to be fewer, but more furious,” he said.

Global warming hits Madison! Madison, WI

Global warming hits Madison! - Isthmus The Daily Page:
Madison has been an officially designated Tree City, USA, for more than 20 years. How will climate change affect our urban forest?
Laura Whitmore, a spokeswoman for the Madison Parks Division, says the city is not sure what to expect. It is just completing an inventory of all city trees in coordination with Philip Townsend, a UW-Madison associate professor of forest and wildlife ecology.
Townsend surveyed Madison's tree canopy using imagery generated by NASA last July. In August he went out with the city bucket trucks to collect leaf samples from the top branches, which are now being analyzed and linked to the NASA images.
When the project is complete, Townsend says, 'we will see which parts of the city forest are already under stress and therefore most susceptible to climate change. In general, urban trees tend to live hard and die young because of the urban heat island effect.'
Townsend fears the longer growing season will do our urban trees more harm than good, by giving a boost to insect pests and tree diseases. Some trees, including bur oaks and maples, will do fine, while firs and spruces, which are native farther north, will not adapt well to our new climatic conditions.
The city's inventory, he says, is a good first step toward preparing the urban treescape for climate change.
'In a progressive city like Madison, urban foresters now know what they didn't know 50 years ago,' he says. 'You need diversity in your tree canopy.'

Like CA Researchers, GA Researcher Finds Cities' Land Use Responsible for Global Warming; Atlanta, GA

WABE: Local Researcher Finds Cities' Land Use Responsible for Global Warming (2009-11-12): ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - Much attention has been paid to greenhouse gases' roll in climate change. But as WABE's Jim Burress reports, a Georgia Tech researcher says there's another cause, too: cities.

All those interstates, highrises even golf courses that make big cities big? They're all contributing to global warming, says Georgia Tech Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning Brian Stone.

'Most of this warming is a product of land use '
like parking lots.

' as opposed to greenhouse gasses'
which come out of your tailpipe.

PricewaterhouseCoopers report says 0.5% public green spending could induce 141% increase in urban green investment; United Kingdom

Green infrastructure in action - Environmental technologies news magazine:
Figures produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), the Government’s advisor on urban design show how a shift in spending from grey to green of just 0.5% in some local authorities could increase investment in urban green space by 141%. Switching public spending from ‘grey’ projects like road building and heavy engineering projects to ‘green’ schemes like street trees, parks, green roofs and waterways could address climate change more effectively, improve public health and make our communities more beautiful says the report, published by CABE.

The report, Grey to Green, identifies the network of natural green resources in every town and city – our ‘green infrastructure’ (GI) - as one of the most practical and cost-effective tools we have for dealing with environmental and social problems. It suggests, for instance, that the £1.28bn budget for widening a 63-mile section of the M25 could pay for 3.2m trees to store three million tonnes of carbon; or 5,000 miles of off-road routes for cyclists and pedestrians. But the report warns that there is a chronic shortage of people in local authorities with the right skills to design and manage green infrastructure, which is essential to harness the benefits.

Attorney calls for more tree planting in West Hollywood to fight global warming; West Hollywood, CA

WeHoNews.com::
West Hollywood, California (Thursday, November 5, 2009) - The bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests made a startling, indeed radical, recommendation earlier this month to fight global warming.

The Commission found that deforestation exceeds the impacts of every car, truck, train and airplane in the world, recommending that preservation of the world’s rain forests take priority over other global warming measures the most effective way to cut green house gases.
While we can’t create a rain forest in West Hollywood, we can create an urban arboreal canopy that would contribute to the fight against global warming
The bottom line is that trees matter. The challenge is for us to figure out how we can act locally to make meaningful changes to our urban environment.

Transforming Miami in Eight Easy Steps-UTC goal seen as one of Miami's key steps to addressing climate change; Miami, FL

Transforming Miami in Eight Easy Steps:
Dear Mayor Diaz: Heading to Copenhagen this year for the most important climate change summit ever? As the former head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, your participation is crucial. We Americans are primarily urban creatures, and our cities are where the battle over energy use will be won or lost.

Seeing the tree from the forest: Predicting the future of plant communities

Seeing the tree from the forest: Predicting the future of plant communities

New algorithm explores future changes in plant populations

The ability to envisage the future may be closer than you would think. A recent paper by Sean Hammond and Karl Niklas in the August 2009 issue of the American Journal of Botany (available here) presents an algorithm that may be used to predict the future dynamics of plant communities, an increasingly interesting area of study as significant environmental changes, such as global climate change and invasive species, are affecting current plant communities.

Similar ecological factors, such as nutrient availability and habitat stability, play a role in the growth and development of both an individual plant and a community of plants, like a forest; however, the length of time that these factors effect change differs between individual plants that may live for decades and plant communities that may exist for thousands of years. A goal of plant ecology has been to find ways to predict plant behavior in communities based on observed properties of a few representative members.

Hammond and Niklas have developed an algorithm—spatially explicit, reiterative algorithm, or SERA—that explores whether changes occurring in plant communities, such as self-thinning and the competitive displacement of one species by another, can be attributed to the characteristics of the individual plants that comprise the community.

Study warns that UN Climate panel's defintion of forest sets canopy cover threshold too low, puts forests at risk

Forest definition comes under fire : Nature News
Ecologists accuse framework convention of barking up the wrong tree.
Natasha Gilbert

Ecologists have questioned the UNFCCC's definition of a forest.
The health of the world's forests — and their capacity to lock away carbon — could be jeopardized by logging if the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) definition of a forest is not changed, a study warns.
A future climate deal could see developing countries financially compensated for preserving their forests. The UNFCCC defines a forest as an area of land 0.05–1 hectare in size, of which more than 10–30% is covered by tree canopy. Trees must also have the potential to reach a minimum height of 2-5 metres.
Countries participating in the UNFCCC can choose how they want to define a forest from within those ranges. For example, in Brazil a forest is defined as an area of land greater than 1 hectare, with more than 30% canopy cover and a minimum tree height of 5 metres. By contrast, Ghana defines a forest as an area of land greater than 0.1 hectare, with more than 15% canopy cover and a minimum tree height of 2 metres.
But a report in the journal Conservation Letters, says that the UNFCCC has set the proportion of land that must be covered by tree canopy too low. Nophea Sasaki, a forest ecologist at Harvard University, and an author of the study, says that woodland could be 'severely degraded' but still be classified as a forest under the current UNFCCC definition.

MORE ON THIS STORY in: UN forest rules undermine principals of REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) initiative: Study

India's forest and tree cover are significant carbon sinks, key elements of CO2 mitigation strategy; India

Forests will rescue India, says Jairam Ramesh DEVELOPMENT NEWS MyNews.in:
India's Forest Cover accounts for 20.6% of the total geographical area of the country as of 2005. In addition, Tree Cover accounts for 2.8% of India's geographical area.

Over the last two decades, progressive national forestry legislations and policies in India aimed at conservation and sustainable management of forests have reversed deforestation and have transformed India's forests into a significant net sink of CO2.

From 1995 to 2005, the carbon stocks stored in our forests and trees have increased from 6,245 million tonnes (mt) to 6,662 mt, registering an annual increment of 38 mt of carbon or 138 mt of CO2 equivalent.

Million schmillion! London becomes world UTC leader via committment to plant 2,000,000 trees by 2025; London, UK

London Will Plant Two Million Trees by 2025 « The Dirt
According to The Guardian (UK), Isabel Dedring, London’s environmental advisor believes average summer temperatures could be 3.9 degrees C higher by 2080. London’s increasing temperatures are viewed as part of the city’s urban heat island effect and the result of global warming. To combat the temperature rise, the mayor released an environment plan that aims to increase tree cover across London by 5 percent, or two million trees, by 2025. An additional 5 percent of tree cover will come from added green space in inner London, including green roofs, according to the The Guardian. The goal is to reach 10 percent more greenery, the amount a UK study contends is required to offset project temperature increases.
Additionally, “trees in streets have a very positive air-quality effect,” noted Isabel Dedring, London’s environmental advisor.
The tree cover project is part of a broader plan,“Leading to a Greener London,” by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The London plan outlines a range of CO2 mitigation and adaptation programs. London’s plan also follows the “UK Low Carbon Transition Plan,” released in mid-July 2009 by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and shares many of its recommendations. (see earlier post)

Moving towards sustainability and drought tolerance in recognition of climate change, water resources; San Diego, CA

voiceofsandiego.org: People... Keeping an Urban Forest, and Resurrecting Trampled Flowerbeds Besides
By KELLY BENNETT
Sunday, May 31, 2009 | In 1892, a dauntless woman named Kate Sessions convinced the city of San Diego to lease her 30 acres in old City Park for her thriving nursery business. In exchange, she'd plant 100 trees a year there and grow 300 more for the rest of the city. Those were the roots of Balboa Park; Sessions is considered the mother of the regional icon.
In 2009, horticulturist Crystal Ritchie drives a white city truck through the park, monitoring the thousands of trees, plants and shrubs in her purview. Immersed in the park's plant life, Ritchie seems to sense -- even more than she sees -- the places in a given radius where the current flora could be replaced with more drought-resistant plants. A dying tree presents an opportunity: what should we plant next?
It's a question shared in dry days across the San Diego region.
'We're all owning up to our climate -- we've been in what I think they call 'zonal denial,'' she says."

California leads the way in connecting trees and forests to climate change strategies; California, USA

California forests hold one answer to climate change - Los Angeles Times
The state is a leader in setting up a program to offset heat-trapping emissions by investing in woodlands.
By Margot Roosevelt
4:55 PM PDT, May 31, 2009
Reporting from Arcata, Calif. -- Silvery light flickers through the Redwood canopy of the Van Eck forest down to a fragrant carpet of needles and thimbleberry brush. A brook splashes along polished stones, through thickets of ferns.
How lush. How lovely. How lucrative.
This 2,200-acre spread in Humboldt County does well by doing good. For the last four years, Van Eck's foresters restricted logging, allowing trees to do what trees do: absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The conservation foundation that oversees the forest then calculated that carbon bonus and sold it for $2 million to individuals and companies trying to offset some 185,000 metric tons of their greenhouse gas emissions.
'Forests can be managed like a long-term carbon bank,' said Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that oversees Van Eck. Selling offsets, she said, is like 'writing checks on the account.'

No country for old trees - study finds Yosemite's big, old trees being lost to climate change; Yosemite, CA

BBC - Earth News: Yosemite's giant trees disappear
Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
No place for old trees (J. A. Lutz)
The oldest and largest trees within California's world famous Yosemite National Park are disappearing.
Climate change appears to be a major cause of the loss.
The revelation comes from an analysis of data collected over 60 years by forest ecologists.
They say one worrying aspect of the decline is that it is happening within one of most protected forests within the US, suggesting that even more large trees may be dying off elsewhere."

Scientists monitor spring leaf out, relate to climate change; Boston, MA; 05/04/09

Scientist Tracks Trees Coming Back To Life WBZ - Boston,MA,USA
The network is called "PhenoCam," because the project is focused on "phenology"-- how the timing of the seasons affects plants and animals. "Images are sent out automatically to our image archive every half hour," said Richardson, "We have literally hundreds of thousands of archive images from the past several years." Since trees are so temperature sensitive, they are a good indicator of the arrival of spring and that timing can have implications for climate science.

City flunking climate change report card; Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; 3/12/09

City Flunking Climate Change Report Card Raise the Hammer - Hamilton,Ontario,Canada
What struck me about the report card is that the measures the city has more or less adopted - sponsoring a conference, taking an inventory of city GHG emissions, setting a tree canopy timetable, and establishing an after-hours lights-out program - are relatively trivial and don't require a significant transformation of the city's priorities.
They're mostly window dressing on a municipal system of land use and transportation that is still largely antithetical to real GHG reductions.

Signing of U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement spurs grass-roots tree planting effort downtown; Chattanooga, TN; 3/9/09

Chattanooga: Grass-roots efforts boost tree count downtown Chattanooga Times Free Press - Chattanooga,TN,USA
In 2006, Mayor Ron Littlefield signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which committed Chattanooga to cutting carbon dioxide emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels. The next year Leadership Chattanooga, with the assistance of city forester Gene Hyde, formulated the project and hired Preston Roberts as its coordinator.
Mr. Roberts said they hope about 800 more trees can be planted in the downtown zone within the next year or two.
But that will take more money. The first 620 trees were planted at an estimated cost of $88,000 obtained through private and corporate funding, as well as a $100,000 grant from the Benwood Foundation and a matching $12,000 state grant. Chattanooga has not provided financial support, but the city has provided offices for Take Root and consultation services by Mr. Hyde.