76
Urban heat island effect making temperatures 8F hotter in 65 US cities – study
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
76 points (100.0% liked)
News
23376 readers
2030 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm sure planting trees all over a city is expensive, but I'm guessing dealing with all of the effects of excess heat might be worth the cost...
Chicago has a fair amount of trees. Maybe some more boulevard type things with trees can be done or maybe rooftop greenery
There are a lot of places in cities, even cities with a fair amount of trees like Chicago, where there could easily be far more trees. It would just mean taking up more sidewalk space, cleaning up leaves in the fall, petals in the spring, etc. Businesses start complaining about it.
And sometimes it could be trees but they think other things are prettier.
Here's a bit of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. Could those flowers be replaced with trees? I don't see why not.
It depends on what is under that dirt. Is it deep enough for a root system, are there utilities under that, etc?
Also, mature trees will need some space for the root system to collect water and spread without destroying roadway. This is why a lot of warmer cities like to plant palm trees in medians - they have a pretty shallow / narrow root system.
The problem with planting trees in boulevards or in parking lot islands is that they cement and asphalt don't allow a lot of water to filter through to the roots. They might be fine for a little while, you might be able to nurse them along if you find a way to water them. But ultimately, they will all die off earlier than they should.
There is also increased maintaince as leaves must be cleared from the streets/sewers, dead branches must be removed before they are hazardous, and the city should be monitoring overall health to cut trees before they rot out and fall.
Agreed. Although, it depends on the tree. A lot of warmer cities like palm trees because they have a root system that works well in this scenario.
It’s also worth noting that many cites have utilities running under these streets.
There have to be tree species that will do all right with less water. They might be invasive though, so that would be a different problem.
Bradford pears were used a lot in my area, but were ultimately invasive. I think putting more native shrubs or bushes might help some since their drip like can be kept smaller than a tree's.
It's a problem I have to deal with regularly at work. So many parking lots had low canopy trees that just all died off at about the same time due to being in parking islands.