A Tree Grows in Boston

TIME

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.

Transcript

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)

03:11 (upbeat music)

03:14 (upbeat music)

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