A Tree Grows in Boston
Boston University professor Lucy Hutyra is one scientist trying to figure out how cities can use trees to mitigate climate change while cutting their carbon emissions.
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00:00 I see a future where science and policy work together,
00:05 where scientists get out of the lab,
00:08 scientists talk to people, talk to communities,
00:11 and find out where real needs are,
00:14 and work on technical engineering, scientific solutions,
00:19 to help people today and tomorrow.
00:23 (upbeat music)
00:26 If you have one tree of the same size in the city
00:38 versus out of the city, it's growing faster.
00:41 So it's taking up more carbon dioxide.
00:45 In the process of photosynthesis,
00:46 that carbon is making it grow into wood.
00:49 That tree is also evaporating water,
00:51 which is mitigating the heat island.
00:53 Those trees taking up carbon is great,
00:57 and we see it in our measurements in the air.
00:59 In the urban case, it had been assumed
01:09 that a tree growing in the city was struggling.
01:13 It's a terrible place to grow, right?
01:15 It's full of air pollution, it has no space,
01:17 all of these challenging natural environment.
01:20 But what we observed when we measured the trees
01:24 is that they were thriving in many cases,
01:27 despite all the challenges.
01:29 If you're a tree growing in the city,
01:32 you are not crammed with other trees
01:34 that are competing for resources.
01:36 You may be crammed into a little box that you're growing in
01:39 that's cut into a sidewalk,
01:41 but you're not competing with other plants for light.
01:44 And so the form that the entire tree takes can be different.
01:48 And more light, which is a fundamental limit
01:51 on photosynthesis and productivity,
01:53 means that trees will grow faster.
01:56 Conceptually, what we were trying to do with VADAP,
02:13 as well as many of the things we've done in the years since,
02:17 is try to not focus on blanket solutions.
02:22 We're talking about cities and heat.
02:40 We know that we need things like trees,
02:43 we need cool roofs,
02:44 we also need some amount of air conditioning in the mix.
02:47 We know what a lot of those will look like,
02:50 but what we don't know
02:51 is what the optimum implementation strategy looks like.
02:55 And that's what, in the last few years,
02:57 I've really been focusing on,
02:59 is thinking about what and where,
03:03 and will things work the same way in different places?
03:06 (upbeat music)
03:09 (upbeat music)
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