Читать книгу The Outdoor Citizen. Get Out, Give Back, Get Active онлайн

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Nadine Galle and her organization, Green City Watch, work to determine forest cover and tree strength in urban areas, and she told me that they utilize geospatial data and artificial intelligence to inform their findings. Their research has shown that many urban areas have cut back on forest cover, which has led to more fragile ecosystems. A report in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening confirmed the loss, showing that between 2009 and 2014, US urban tree coverage fell from 40.4 percent to 39.4 percent, an annual “urban/community tree cover loss” of 175,000 acres, or 36 million trees. This resulted in an estimated benefits loss of $96 million per year—a dollar cost translated from the capacity of trees to remove air pollution, sequester carbon, conserve energy by shading buildings, and reduce power-plant emissions.61

To counter urban tree loss, a number of cities have undertaken Million Tree Initiatives to add one million trees to their cities through planting and the giving away of free trees. In 2005, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa planted a tree his second day in office and announced a plan, Million Trees LA, to plant one million trees in Los Angeles. When he left office eight years later, more than 400,000 trees had been planted.62 Since then, City Plants has taken over the initiative. City Plants was already a partner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which had launched a program called Trees for a Green LA in 2001, and today, in collaboration with six nonprofits and several city departments, City Plants plants and distributes twenty thousand trees each year.63 Denver, Boston, Shangai, London, Ontario, and other cities have their own initiatives. Incredibly, Ethiopia planted more than 350 million trees in a twelve-hour period in June 2019, a world record, made possible by millions of Ethiopians who took part in a challenge that was a part of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Green Legacy Campaign.