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Trees for me, we and thee: What's behind the growing push for 'tree equity'

Most of us don't think of trees as a measure of social justice, but it's a real thing.

Wealthy areas have up to 65% more tree cover than lower-income communities.

When we talk about environmental justice, we usually talk about how vulnerable communities are disproportionately impacted by things like contaminated water, air pollution, toxic living conditions and lack of access to healthy food. We aren't usually referring to about how many trees someone has around them on a regular basis, but a push for "tree equity" indicates that maybe we should.

That's right, tree equity. It's a real thing.

The impact that trees have on our daily lives is significant. Not only do trees provide natural beauty that brings us joy and comfort, but they absorb carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, release oxygen, provide cooling shade, filter drinking water and support wildlife. Being near trees helps us live healthier lives in various ways, but some people see more of these benefits than others.

In fact, according to the non-profit group American Forests, wealthy areas have 65% more tree cover than lower-income areas nationwide in the U.S., and it's especially an issue in our cities.


"The inequitable distribution of trees exacerbates social inequities," American Forests shares on its website. "A map of tree cover is too often a map of income and race—especially in cities. That’s because trees often are sparse in low-income neighborhoods and some neighborhoods of color. In fact, policies from the early 1900s are still shaping the way redlining contributes to periods of disinvestment, exacerbating tree inequity in these neighborhoods."

The "tree equity" project aims to minimize these disparities so that everyone can reap the health, economic and other benefits trees provide. Through calculating a "tree equity score" derived from tree canopy cover, climate, demographic and socioeconomic data in 486 Census-defined Urbanized Areas, the project aims to prioritize planting trees in neighborhoods that need them the most.

And cities are stepping up to the plate. Washington, D.C., now boasts an overall tree equity score of 91 out of 100—one of the best in the nation—but it took concerted, sustained effort to get there. Decades of disinvestment in the 70s and 80s led to a profound reduction in tree cover in the city, and by the late 1990s, the impact of that disinvestment was clear. In 1999, the Washington Post’s Metro section shared two aerial photos of the city, one from 1973 and one from 1997, showing how the landscape had changed over that time and people were shocked.

"The story needed no words," shares American Forests. "From the perspective of the 30-meter resolution available at the time, one image was predominantly green, the other looked like a tornado had ripped through a majority of the nation’s capital."

The stark difference between those images sparked a citywide conversation about priorities, and a push for more vegetation ensued. The city created an Urban Forestry Administration with a robust budget for getting the city's tree canopy thriving. And according to D.C.'s current tree equity score, it has worked.

On the other side of the country, the other Washington is also investing in trees, which may seem ironic considering its nickname as The Evergreen State and Seattle's "Emerald City" moniker. Trees have always been a big part of Washington's identity, but that doesn't mean its overall tree equity score is good. The interactive tree equity score map shows neighborhoods around Seattle ranging from a perfect score—100 out of 100—all the way down to 16 out of 100.

According to Grist, Washington has initiated the nation's first statewide tree equity project, the Washington Tree Equity Collaborative, bringing together city governments, Native tribes, community groups, businesses and researchers to expand the tree canopy in Washington’s urban areas with a focus on underserved populations.

Washington’s commissioner of public lands Hillary Franz said in a statement, “We must invest like never before, in order to ensure our most vulnerable communities have cleaner air and are better protected from extreme heat."

Grist offers a specific example of tree inequity in Seattle: Wealthy neighborhoods along Puget Sound and Lake Washington tend to have a lot of trees, while lower-income areas of south Seattle do not. Some communities will naturally have more trees due to proximity to water or natural topography, of course, but an analysis from Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development found that the most disadvantaged communities have been losing tree coverage 11 times faster than the least disadvantaged. That's an equity issue.

With climate change leading to more deadly heat waves in the American West, trees have become even more vital. The shade provided by trees can lower surface temperatures by double digits, and the evaporative properties of tree leaves can lower overall temperatures by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Lowering temperatures reduces energy use, which in turn helps lower pollution and increase air quality and even helps reduce the costs of street pavement maintenance since excessive heat makes pavement break down more quickly.

Of coure, the flip side of thee relationship between climate change and trees is that extreme weather events put a lot of stress on trees. Heat waves, droughts, strong storms, fires—not exactly ideal conditions for trees to thrive in overall. Even in areas where climate change may appear to be having a positivite impact on tree growth, researchers have found that pollution and higher temperatures are making trees larger, but weaker.

There's no question, however, that planting more trees is a good thing. Seattle's current plan will see three new trees planted for every healthy, site-appropriate tree removed from city property and two trees planted for every tree that dies or is deemed hazardous or invasive. And over the next five years, the city plans to plant 8,000 trees on public and private properties and 40,000 trees in parks and natural areas, with underserved communities being prioritized.

We all deserve the benefits trees have to offer. To learn more about tree equity and projects to build more tree cover and find out how you can help, visit the American Forests website.

via Nasa

To honor the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and he 20th anniversary of NASA's Earth Observatory, the agency asked the public to pick our all-time best image on Earth. After five a five-round tournament and more than 56,000 votes, the readers chose Ocean Sand, Bahamas as their favorite.

We've posted 16 of the other top entrants. You can see the complete tournament results at Earth Observatory.


Ocean Sand, Bahamas (2001)

via NASA

Though the above image may resemble a new age painting straight out of an art gallery in Venice Beach, California, it is in fact a satellite image of the sands and seaweed in the Bahamas.

The image was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) instrument aboard the Landsat 7 satellite. Tides and ocean currents in the Bahamas sculpted the sand and seaweed beds into these multicolored, fluted patterns in much the same way that winds sculpted the vast sand dunes in the Sahara Desert.

Raikoke Erupts (2019)

via NASA

An unexpected series of blasts from a remote volcano in the Kuril Islands sent ash and volcanic gases streaming high over the North Pacific Ocean.

"What a spectacular image. It reminds me of the classic Sarychev Peak astronaut photograph of an eruption in the Kuriles from about ten years ago," said Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech. "The ring of white puffy clouds at the base of the column might be a sign of ambient air being drawn into the column and the condensation of water vapor. Or it could be a rising plume from interaction between magma and seawater because Raikoke is a small island and flows likely entered the water."

Where the Dunes End (2019)

via NASA

Mountains of sand, some as tall as 300 meters (1000 feet), reach from the floor of Africa's Namib Desert toward the sky. Driven by wind, these dunes march across the desert, bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and in other directions by solid, rocky land.

The abrupt transition from sand to land is visible in these images, acquired on November 13, 2019, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. They show the northern extent of the Namib Sand Sea—a field of sand dunes spanning more than 3 million hectares (more than 10,000 square miles) within the Namib-Naukluft Park, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013. Sand appears red, painted by a layer of iron oxide.

Twin Blue Marbles (2007)

via NASA

This view of Earth from space is a fusion of science and art, drawing on data from multiple satellite missions and the talents of NASA scientists and graphic artists. The twin images are a composite of multiple images taken between 1994 and 2004.

Fire in the Sky and on the Ground (2011)

via NASA

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) used a digital camera to capture several hundred photographs of the aurora australis, or "southern lights," while passing over the Indian Ocean on September 17, 2011.

Retreat of the Columbia Glacier (2014)

via NASA

Scientists have long studied Alaska's fast-moving Columbia Glacier, a tidewater glacier that descends through the Chugach Mountains into Prince William Sound. Yet the river of ice continues to deliver new surprises.

Preliminary results show that both the West Branch and the East Branch (which feeds into the Main Branch) are now moving between 5 and 10 meters (16 and 33 feet) per day. That's slow for Columbia, but fast compared to other glaciers.

View of Earth from Saturn (2006)

via NASA


via NASA

Seen from a billion kilometers away, through the ice and dust particles of Saturn's rings, Earth appears as a tiny, bright dot. The image is a composite (layered image) made from 165 images taken by the wide-angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft over nearly three hours on September 15, 2006.

The Dark Side and the Bright Side (2015)

via NASA

A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has captured a unique view of the Moon as it passed between the spacecraft and Earth. A series of test images shows the fully illuminated "dark side" of the Moon that is not visible from Earth.

The images were taken over the course of five hours on July 16, 2015.

A Voyager Far From Home (1977)

The image of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon was captured on September 18, 1977, when Voyager was a mere 11.66 million kilometers (7.25 million miles) from Earth and directly above Mount Everest (on the night side of the planet at 25 degrees north latitude).

On September 5, 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. Thirty-five years later, the planetary probe is now an interstellar traveler, having traveled farther from Earth than any manmade object in history.

Roiling Flows on Holuhraun Lava Field (2014)

via NASA

On September 6, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this view of the ongoing eruption in Iceland.

Ice and the plume of steam and sulfur dioxide appear cyan and bright blue, while liquid water is navy blue. Bare or rocky ground around the Holuhraun lava field appears in shades of green or brown in this band combination. Fresh lava is bright orange and red.

Antarctica Melts Under Its Hottest Days on Record (2020)

via NASA

On February 6, 2020, weather stations recorded the hottest temperature on record for Antarctica. Thermometers at the Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula reached 18.3°C (64.9°F)—around the same temperature as Los Angeles that day. The warm spell caused widespread melting on nearby glaciers.

The warm temperatures arrived on February 5 and continued until February 13, 2020. The images above show melting on the ice cap of Eagle Island and were acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on February 4 and February 13, 2020.

Atafu Atoll, Tokelau (2009)

via NASA

At roughly eight kilometers wide, Atafu Atoll is the smallest of three atolls and one island (Nukunonu and Fakaofo Atolls to the southeast and Swains Island to the south are not shown) comprising the Tokelau Islands group located in the southern Pacific Ocean.

Making Waves in the Andaman Sea (2020)

via NASA

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured these images of the Andaman Sea on November 29, 2019. The reflection of the Sun on the ocean—sunglint—helps make the internal waves visible. The colors also have been slightly enhanced. The detailed swirls, fronts, and patterns are all quite real, but certain shades and tones in the data have been separated and filtered to make water features more visible.

Just Another Day on Aerosol Earth (2018)

via NASA

During one day in August, tropical cyclones, dust storms, and fires spread tiny particles throughout the atmosphere.

The Electric Eye of Cyclone Bansi (2015)

Bansi formed in the southwestern Indian Ocean on January 11, 2015. By the time this photo was taken on the following day, Bansi had achieved tropical cyclone strength, with sustained maximum winds over 185 kilometers (115 miles) per hour. The cyclone would reach category 4 strength before becoming a weak extra-tropical system on January 19.

Awesome, Frightening Views of Hurricane Florence (2018)

Satellites and astronauts observed the potent storm as it headed for landfall in the southeastern United States.

Over the past several years, artist Benjamin Von Wong has been on an amazing journey inspiring people to reconsider what they throw away.

It started with a trip to Guatemala and an up-close photoshoot of a massive trash heap there, and quickly morphed into a series of projects designed to confront people with various aspects of the world's waste problem.

As an artist, however, he wanted to do it in a way that would get people to look first before he unloaded harrowing facts about waste on them. There's so much alarmist news out there about what we're doing to our planet that, frankly, after a while, many of us end up turning off to the problem. Von Wong's method of turning trash into something beautiful to get our attention is a different, perhaps more productive approach.


"As human beings, we go through so much sh*t," noted the artist in a blog post on Bored Panda. "Every day, we make dozens of small decisions to buy more stuff – at the supermarket, malls, online… For most of my life, I didn’t think it mattered. After all, I was just one person, making a couple of small decisions."

"But one day, I found myself in a landfill surrounded by an endless mountain of other people’s small decisions and realized that maybe those small decisions did matter."

So, with a veritable army of like-minded volunteers, he created a series of waste-based art installations to help wake others up and see the problem that's all around them.

He put a mermaid in a plastic sea of 10,000 bottles — the same amount the average person uses and throws away in a lifetime.

He created "Toxic Laundry Monsters" to bring the chemicals and micro-plastics that are released every time we do a wash to life.

His latest piece, "Strawpocalypse" is meant to showcase the enormity of the plastic straw problem. It took him and his crew 6 months to collect 168,000 straws recovered off the streets of Vietnam to complete the waves.

In partnership with Laura François and her nonprofit, clothingtheloop.org, Von Wong took thousands of garments that were left in an abandoned factory in Cambodia and made several installations to accent how wasteful the fashion industry has become. You can check out how they made them here.

[rebelmouse-image 19480428 dam="1" original_size="700x316" caption="Photo via VonWong/YouTube." expand=1]Photo via VonWong/YouTube.

[rebelmouse-image 19480429 dam="1" original_size="700x353" caption="Photo via VonWong/YouTube." expand=1]Photo via VonWong/YouTube.

And this plastic cave was made from 18,000 cups that were collected from a food court in just one and a half days. It really puts that "by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean" statistic into perspective.

The point of all of this, Von Wong hopes, is that more people will start to change their consumption and waste habits. If nothing else, his art shows that one person can make a difference. A big difference.

We're up against a mounting problem, and that can feel overwhelming, but if you pick one thing today — whether it's plastic straws, bags, bottles or how you buy clothes — and make a decision to be more mindful about it, you'll be taking a significant step in the right direction.

On Earth Day we're reminded how precious our planet is and what will happen without meaningful change.

You probably don't spend much time thinking about your computer's screensaver. But what if something so simple could help make a difference for endangered wildlife around the globe?

Graduate student Lauren Race and three creative partners (Carl Jannerfeldt, Beth Kushner, and Nancy Black) retouched some of the most common screensaver images to reflect what they might more accurately look like due to the effects of climate change.


"There had been a discussion about how the current Mac screensaver images almost looked too perfect, too pristine," Race says. "They were beginning to feel obsolete due to climate change."

Images via Earthsaver.

The updated images are a harrowing reminder of what's happening to the planet and everyone who occupies it.

The ensuing project became Earthsaver, which uses the images to raise awareness and funds for the World Wildlife Fund. Those who download the images for their computer are taken to a direct donation page, where they can support the WWF, which is currently raising funds aimed at adding 3,000 new members to its roster of supporters before April 22.

Race and her partners worked with 17 creative retouchers to update each image in a way that accurately reflects how the artist sees the original composition being affected by climate change. Images in the Earthsaver collection include:

A whale and other fish dwarfed by a looming set of plastic drink rings:

A polar bear is replaced with a plastic bag:

Tourists visit the last of the dwindling ice caps:

A mother lion and her cub begin to starve from lack of available food:

Nonetheless, even stark messages can carry a ray of hope.

It can be difficult to look at these images, even knowing they are photo illustrations. However, the impact they show is a real possibility, and may soon become reality if more isn't done to stop the increasing effects of global climate change.

These images are also an opportunity for hope.

Organizations like the WWF are working every day to change the narrative of our wildlife and environment. And we can help that change — even by something as simple as updating the backdrop images on our computers.

"We know that downloading a screensaver that displays extremely depressing nature images drifting across your computer screens every day is a tall order," Race says. "For us, getting a conversation started and donating to the WWF is more important than downloads."

You can view and download all 17 of the Earthsaverimages here and donate directly to the WWF here.