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Trees Provide Major Community Benefits
Trees Provide Major Community Benefits
Why do so many people love it when there are trees in our landscape? Evidence indicates that trees and forests provide a wide range of direct benefits to humans, from reducing levels of stress and improving mood, to lowering blood pressure and bolstering our immune systems. Frequent exposure to spaces with trees and forest has also been shown to improve sleep and improve the ability to focus.
Urban Trees Are Hard At Work
Moderating the Climate
Have you ever noticed how much cooler it is under a tree on a hot summer day? Urban trees do all kinds of things to regulate their environment. This includes casting shade, filtering pollution, and capturing stormwater. They keep the city more comfortable and save us millions of dollars a year by reducing energy and infrastructure needs!Moderating the Climate
Feeding Us
Feeding Us
Over 40,000 pounds of fruit grows on the trees of the Emerald City every year. Local organizations like City Fruit Seattle work hard to ensure that this bounteous harvest is not wasted. Dozens of food banks and meal programs in the city benefit from the bounty of our trees.
Supporting Ecosystems
Supporting Ecosystems
Trees are beacons of life in the concrete jungle. Urban forests build homes for thousands of types of other organisms. They make soil, cycle nutrients, and create habitat. Birds, insects, mammals, fungi, mosses, and lichens all call trees home, and many more live in the soil below! Look up into the canopy and see if you can spot any of these other urban organisms.
Creating Culture
Creating Culture
Trees provide many benefits for societal wellbeing, improving mental health, boosting immunity, and reducing aggression. Trees also lend beauty to the landscape and build community by serving as gathering places. This can be seen in action each spring, when thousands gather to visit the famous Yoshino Cherry Trees on the UW Quad.
Trees at UW Provide Ecosystem Services
The list of benefits that trees provide us goes on and on! Each one of these benefits is what we might call an ecosystem service, a contribution to the health and wellbeing of our species provided by the natural functioning of the environment. Scientists estimate that the cost of trying to replace all of the global ecosystem services could amount to as much as $44 Trillion each year, a massive value.
Our trees here on the UW Campus are doing their part too! For trees, ecosystem service value can be estimated for individual trees using a software called iTree! This map shares exactly how valuable each tree is based on the amount of stormwater they capture, pollution they remove, and carbon they store. Trees on this map that are a darker shade of green are working the hardest. Most of these are large old specimens that have been growing on campus for many decades. Click on the individual trees to learn exactly how hard they are working.
The Storymap at the bottom of this page shares a bit more about campus ecosystem services, and where they are concentrated at UW.
Urban Canopy Declines When Planning Doesn't Prioritize Trees
As magnificent as the collection of trees on the University of Washington campus may be, the UW Urban Forest is in decline. While some of these losses are related to aging trees, insect and fungal pathogens, and climate change, the overwhelming majority of canopy loss on campus is the result of re-development and construction. A failure to prioritize canopy retention in the campus planning has resulted in canopy cover declines from 28% cover in 2016, to less than 24% cover today.
Unfortunately, this means that UW has contributed to more construction related canopy loss in Seattle than just about any other single entity in the last decade. Further losses seem likely as the UW enters another phase of development and construction in the coming years. More thoughtful planning at the design stage could help offer an alternative future, where new campus buildings are not constructed at the expense of campus trees and the incredible benefits they provide to the students and community!
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