march 18, 2022
Mapping Tree Inequality: Why Many People Don’t Benefit from Tree Cover and Why it Matters for Climate Change and Covid19
Dr. Robert McDonald
Lead Scientist, Nature-Based Solutions, The Nature Conservancy
Abstract
Summers around the world are getting hotter with an increase in dangerous temperatures and deadly heatwaves due to climate change. Although trees can be one solution to reduce air temperatures in neighborhoods, the amount of tree canopy is unequally distributed with low-income neighborhoods generally having less tree cover. Join Rob McDonald to discuss his work mapping extent of tree cover inequality and its effect on temperatures for a large sample of thousands of communities throughout the United States. He will also present recent research showing how tree inequality is related to Covid19 risk.
Biosketch
Dr. Robert McDonald is Lead Scientist for Nature-Based Solutions at The Nature Conservancy. He researches the impact and dependencies of communities on the natural world, studying how nature can increase resilience in the face of climate change and improve human health and well-being. He holds a PhD in Ecology from Duke University and has published more than 70 scientific publications and two books. Prior to joining the Conservancy, he was a Smith Conservation Biology Fellow at Harvard University, studying the impact global urban growth will have on biodiversity and conservation. He also taught landscape ecology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, helping architects and planners incorporate ecological principles into their projects.