The importance of shade trees to health

This is a huge problem here in the Denver area. Very few trees left anywhere but on private property. They cut down a few dozen perfectly healthy oaks recently that used to be located around the outside of the closed down merchandise mart on 58th. Those trees were perfect and next to the road (out of the way of the new construction going on) and were the only shade anywhere around this warehouse district.
Pissed me off to no end. What was the reason? Just some assholes didn't like them. They were fined for doing this but the damage was done.
What I miss most about living in FL is the beach and the huge oaks. The trees on my old street (Greenwood st/Greenwood Cemetary) in Orlando were amazing. I Google Earth my old street a few times a year just to look at those majestic oaks. Man I love trees.

 

I was out in Denver this summer for a few days and I did notice that there weren't a lot of trees anywhere. Particularly on the interstate between the airport and downtown. Off in the distance where the mountains start you could see some.

 

Urban areas are heat sinks making hot weather even worse.

One Eco suggestion I am behind is the idea of planting 1 TRILLION trees around the world. Trees are carbon harvesters.

 

Imagine how we feel in the path of destruction left by Hurricane Michael. We lost a huge percentage of our trees. I lost the four largest trees in my yard; 42” dbh live oak with a huge canopy, 30” long leaf pine, 28” & 24” slash pines, plus the top of my 24” live oak was blown off and against my front door. This loss of trees all around has a significant affect on shade/localized temps and just as importantly on the mental sense of loss. Traveling to other areas that still have their huge oaks (Gville, Lakeland,etc.) is traumatic.

 

A bit off-topic but the health angle kind of goes both ways right now being many people on the west coast of Florida are either cutting back large tree limbs or even removing trees altogether due to the fear of hurricanes. Studies show falling limbs and trees caused millions of dollars of damage during Ian and apparently many homeowners are taking action to limit potential damage should another storm hit.

I think it is a bit of an overreaction but while I respect the beauty and the benefits trees provide, I can also understand why homeowners are “cutting back”.

 

Wonder what amount of acreage we have lost in the past 5 years here in volusia county. Swaths of land are getting mowed down with very few trees if any replaced. DR Horton neighborhoods won't be stopped though....

 

Yeah, it cracks me up to hear all this talking of building “carbon capture machines” that can suck the carbon right out of the air and store it safely for decades…. Since…. You know… trees,,,

 

Charlotte has one of the nations best urban forest or tree canopy. Maybe the best.

Discover the city with the largest coverage of trees in the world as it bucks trend

 

I remember that year we had at least four storms crisscrossing the state. I wasn’t ever worried about the roof or flooding. Only worry was a tree coming down in the house. And there were lots of trees down in Jax, Gainesville and elsewhere.
I hated the fact that I was looking at my trees as the enemy.

 

I understand both sides of this discussion. I live in central North Carolina my yard alone has 6 White Oaks, 1 very old and very large (for its type) Red Oak, 4 Dogwoods and 3 Cherry Trees. We live on a street called Double Oaks, so that should give you an idea of what my neighbors yards all look like. 2/3 of our street has an oak canopy and keeps the pavement from getting sun in the hottest of summer days, so dog walk and play freely along our road without fear of burnt pads.

That all said, at my age, I would gladly take down every single oak and cherry in my yard if my wife would let me. The amount of work in fall with leaves and worse, the damned acorns, and the amount of work year-round picking up branches and sticks and trimming the trees to keep them from growing over my house or my neighbors houses is excessive. The cost for all of that is excessive relative to just cutting them down. That is all in addition to the two white oaks that died from Chinese hardwood beetles and other red oak that died from a fungus that I have taken down over the past several years.

Worse yet, yes, healthy oaks can and do come down in ice storms, snow storms, severe thunder-storms with high winds. I have not had the misfortune yet, but our neighbors had their house bisected as the result of a 3-4 day long ice storm 5-6 years ago.

Trees are great....when they are not your responsibility to properly maintain or maintain the property that they are on. Then, they pretty much suck and make me long for my house in Arizona with full desert landscape and nothing but cacti.

 

A few years ago I attended a native plant conference where a tree expert from Louisville presented a talk about a project he did in that city. Neighborhoods with tree canopies were about 30 °F cooler at street level in the summer than neighborhoods without.

The podcast 99% Invisible recently did an episode on shade.

Shade Redux - 99% Invisible

Shade can literally be a matter of life and death. Los Angeles, like most cities around the world, is heating up. And in dry, arid environments like LA, shade is perhaps the most important factor influencing human comfort, “even more than our temperature, more than humidity, more than wind speed,” says Bloch. Without shade, the chance of mortality, illness, and heatstroke can go way up. People become dizzy, disoriented, confused, lethargic, and dehydrated — and for the elderly or people with health issues, that can tip into more dangerous territory, like heart attacks or organ failure. Shade can literally save lives.

 

Broke my heart coming home that Christmas and seeing the devastation from the balcony of my dad's condo. Used to see a solid canopy of giant oaks stretching for miles. What I saw that week was like a grave yard of the skeletal remains of many of those old oaks. Went to the yard where my childhood home was (house had been torn down) and saw that so many of the trees my brothers and I used to climb were gone.

 

Ncar, I would give anything to have my trees back. The silver lining of Michael blowing so many over in my yard is that with a more open yard I now have a purple Martin colony to enjoy Feb through July. That, and the devastating north winds that took my trees down blew them away from my house; all but the oak out front that deposited it’s top third against my front door. I was blessed with no tree on my house, unlike many neighbors. But I would rather have trees and the associated maintenance and rare hurricane threat than a barren unshaded yard.

 

Yep.

 

I agree that live oaks (and cypress and cabbage palm) are well adapted to withstand (normal) hurricanes. My 42-inch live oak probably had a hundred years of life left in it but a rare cat 5 was too much to stand against. When I saw through the horizontal rain a big branch fly away I thought to myself that it has seen storms before and it will be OK. I was wrong. I did have three smaller LOs survive in near leafless mode. I hate how they look like big green poodles when the leaves start to come back.