City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1537178
U.S. Forest Service and Partners For more livable cities, researchers study climate up close and personal on the Colorado Front Range By Travis Warziniack, Natalie Cooper, and Melissa McHale Travis Warziniack and Natalie Cooper each work in the Human Dimensions Program at the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colorado. Warziniack is a Research Economist and Program Manager for the Station, and Cooper is a Science Delivery Specialist. Dr. Melissa McHale is an Associate Professor of Urban Ecology and Sustainability and Acting Director of the Sustainability Hub at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver. Imagine standing in a parking lot surrounded by parked cars and black pavement. Then imagine standing in a landscape lush with trees and other veg- etation. Regardless of what your weather app says, the parking lot will likely feel warmer. These two microcli- mates feel different due to interactions between the built environment and the surrounding nature. Pavement and buildings absorb the sun's energy and radiate heat throughout the day. Meanwhile, trees and other vegeta- tion do the opposite; they block incoming radiation and act like natural air conditioners through transpiration. The urban heat island (UHI) effect describes the ten- dency for urban areas to be hotter than surrounding rural areas due to the concentration of buildings, pave- ment, and other infrastructure that absorb and retain heat. It is typically measured using air or surface tem- perature data across broad spatial scales to quantify the average temperature difference between cities and their outlying areas. However, these large-scale averages don't capture the smaller, human-scale variations in heat— such as the intense warmth radiating off asphalt or the cooling provided by a single shade tree—that shape people's actual experiences of temperature in cities. 12 CityTREES Researchers at the Denver Urban Field Station are advancing heat measurement techniques to better capture how people actually experience thermal comfort in urban environments. By measuring heat and thermal comfort of microclimates, researchers can locate within urban areas where exposure to environmental hazards like extreme heat is most significant, who is most at risk, and how communities can reduce risk through active management of urban landscapes. The goal is to iden- tify nature-based solutions to create more livable cities. Typically, people will go out of their way to avoid expo- sure to uncomfortable heat and poor air quality, but sometimes, exposure is inevitable. Urban residents reliant on public transportation, for example, must wait at transit stops that often lack shade or other structural or environmental amenities. These effects are especially pronounced for low-income residents, which are typically more reliant on public transportation and more likely to live in neighborhoods with fewer trees or shade struc- ture. Differences in heat exposure translate into unequal risks to the health and well-being of urban residents when temperatures approach extreme highs, as seen in recent summers in Denver and other cities across the U.S. >>