Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 0:43:46 GMT -5
A new map of Los Angeles highlights one form of inequality: which city streets and homes benefit from the shade of the city's more than 10 million trees. The city is the first to pilot a new Google tool, called Tree Canopy Lab , which was used to create the map. More trees, more areas benefited According to Fast Company , LA plans to plant 90,000 trees by next year as part of its version of the Green New Deal, and increase tree canopy in areas that need it most by 50%. It's aimed at neighborhoods " most affected by extreme heat related to climate change ," says Rachel Malarich, the city's first forestry officer. While trees have multiple benefits in cities, from improving air quality to promoting mental health, they are also particularly useful in mitigating the urban heat island effect, the fact that large swaths of concrete make Some neighborhoods are even hotter when temperatures rise. The EPA reports that shaded surfaces can be 20 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. The new tool can help identify areas to prioritize for tree planting. Google launched the project as part of the Environmental Insights Explorer , a platform it created to help cities confront climate change and air pollution. He began by partnering with Los Angeles to understand the city's needs, and then designed a solution that he plans to make available to other cities.
One of the best ways to make hundreds or thousands of cities is to make one or two cities first. Nithya Sowrirajan, Director of Google Maps. Los Angeles is also counting trees the traditional way, with workers going block by block and painstakingly recording the species, size and condition of each tree growing on the street. That's something needed for the city's forestry department to manage public trees. But the process is slow, and most of the trees in Los Angeles are lost: 90% are on private property. To understand the full picture of which areas need more trees, the city Europe Cell Phone Number List needs a broader view. In the past, it has relied on another complex process involving a plane using LIDAR laser technology and equipment that performs the analysis, so complicated and expensive that it rarely occurs, and so slow that it is obsolete by the time it is published. The city didn't have that ability, especially in this decade of climate action, to be able to really check how we're doing and have regular updates without it being an expensive process. Google has made it so that we have this platform to not only explore and think about better decision making right now, but also to strategize to get a similar deck assessment in a couple of years to track our progress. That would cost resources in terms of time, as well as the future funding that we would have had to seek to do that type of analysis. Rachel Malarich, the city's first forestry officer. Google uses AI to quickly analyze aerial photos of trees.
The tree detection algorithm analyzes it from different angles and calculates the average tree canopy. Nithya Sowrirajan, Director of Google Maps. The company also helped develop a similar tool, called Global Forest Watch, that can track deforestation in remote areas by analyzing satellite data. In cities, tree analysis can be combined with other key measurements. We have public datasets into which we input heat indices. We have brought in population densities. And overlaying them is a kind of magical calculation of where populations are most vulnerable due to low tree cover. Nithya Sowrirajan, Director of Google Maps. The objective More than half of people living in LA live in areas with less than 10% tree cover. Research suggests that tree canopy cover needs to reach 40% to significantly reduce temperatures. 44% of Angelenos also live in neighborhoods at risk of extreme heat. There is a clear connection between areas that lack trees and those that see the worst heat. The new tool will help the city identify the best places to plant, starting at the widest level, which is the one with the fewest trees and the highest risk. Then the team can identify more specific places to plant. We're able to scale down that neighborhood and say, Okay, what are the types of land use here? Rachel Malarich, the city's first forestry officer. In an area with apartment buildings, there may not be as much room for trees in front or back yards. That could mean bigger changes: In some cases, a street might have to be redesigned to " provide more large trees to offer those health benefits and protections to the public ," Malarich says. Google plans to work with the city to continue developing the Tree Canopy Lab , and will soon make it available to other cities. The urban forestry community is quite small, and there are others that are trying to be quite aggressive with their canopy equity goals. And the feedback they will provide will only make this tool stronger.