Trees could help cool Fresno homes and save money. New tool shows where to plant more
Could planting more trees help soften the impact of the central San Joaquin Valley’s heatwaves and help residents cut high energy costs? A new study on tree canopy coverage suggests the answer is yes.
According to the nonprofit conservation group American Forests, the city of Fresno needs more trees, approximately 1.9 million more.
Trees help improve air quality, lower temperatures, reduce energy consumption, and improve the overall health and well-being of communities.
But in Fresno and across the country, not everyone enjoys these benefits equally.
The organization recently released an online tool that measures the Tree Equity Score in urban communities throughout the country. The score highlights the relationship between tree canopy coverage and surface temperatures and the number of people living in a neighborhood, plus their income, employment, race, age, and health factors.
They found that whiter, more affluent communities tend to have more trees while low-income neighborhoods, communities of color tend to have fewer.
“A map of tree canopy is also a map of income and a map of race,” said Jad Daley, President and CEO of American Forests.
Trees: a ‘life and death infrastructure’ in Fresno?
The history of redlining in Fresno is well documented and has been a topic of conversation in advocacy work around increasing green space in the city. American Forests said this legacy of discrimination has impacted which neighborhoods have access to the benefits of tree canopy coverage.
The Tree Equity map of Fresno shows that neighborhoods in north, northeast, and eastern Fresno have more trees than communities in the city’s central, south and southwest areas.
This lack of trees corresponds with different neighborhoods experiencing different heat levels in a city.
According to the National Weather Service, asphalt and concrete gradually release stored heat at night, which can produce higher temperatures in the evening, creating a phenomenon known as the “urban heat island effect.” Research on the heat island effect indicates that people who live in the hottest parts of a city are more likely to be poor and experience increased health risks and violence.
For example, the Highway City neighborhood in northwest Fresno sits between the train to its east and the busy Highway 99 to its west. The neighborhood — comprised of 86% people of color and 71% of people in poverty — has 6% canopy coverage when the goal is 48% coverage. According to the study, the aggregate surface temperature of Highway City is 102 degrees, making it an urban heat island. The Tree Equity Score for the area is 47.
About five miles northeast of Highway City sits the Sierra Sky Park neighborhood, where quiet residential streets are full of shade trees, flower shrubs, and grass lawns. This neighborhood — home to 26% people of color and no reported poverty — has 24% tree canopy cover out of 48% coverage goal and a Tree Equity Score of 92. The average surface temperature is 92 degrees, 10 degrees lower than Highway City.
The prevalence of trees can offset the heat island impact by lowering the temperature up to 10 degrees at street level and up to 22 degrees at night, according to American Forests. For Fresno, a city impacted by drought, extreme heat, and poor air quality, Daley said that trees are “a life and death infrastructure.”
Tree coverage has the potential to reduce more than just the temperature. Through Tree Equity, households can cut back on their energy use for home heating and cooling by an average of 7% nationally, according to the study.
“It ties into what some folks have labeled as a ‘poverty tax,’” said Sandra Celedon, CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities. “We know that folks that live in poverty have to pay more for services, for energy bills, financial services, even for transportation. The conversation that we need to have [is] about how the built environment really is responsible for poverty,” said Celedon.
For Daley, leaders need to embrace trees as an essential building block of any community. “Not having trees in your neighborhood is like not having stoplights,” said Daley.
Planting trees in ‘under-treed’ neighborhoods of Fresno
Fresno had about 200,000 trees in 2017, according to a study funded by Cal Fire.
“There’s a huge need in the Central Valley,” said Greg Dion of Cal Fire’s Urban and Community Forest program. “Almost every city is below their canopy coverage that would be ideal,” said Dion.
That’s why Cal Fire funds groups throughout the Valley like Tree Fresno to plant drought-tolerant trees in the region’s most disadvantaged communities.
Over 95% of the trees that Tree Fresno plants are in what Tree Fresno CEO Mona Cummings calls “under-treed” communities defined as disadvantaged according to the CalEnviroScreen.
The way Cummings said she sees it, cities need to think of trees as part of the urban environment. “Infrastructure is that ability to connect one house to the other, one community to the next,” said Cummings. “I don’t want it to be a luxury.”
Tree Fresno has recently committed to planting 20,000 water-wise trees over the next 10 years in “under-treed” communities as part of the international collaboration, 1t.org initiative to plant one trillion trees by 2030. They have also partnered with the city under Mayor Jerry Dyer’s Beautify Fresno initiative to plant over 150 drought-tolerant trees, primarily on medians and near trails in the city.
“This is how we bring life to the city of Fresno,” said Celedon, as well as jobs, better air quality, and better health outcomes.
Local, state, and federal support for Urban Forestry
With the recent approval of Measure P, a sales tax to benefit local park expansion, more green space is underway for Fresno. A percentage of this funding is earmarked specifically for projects that improve tree canopy coverage.
In addition to Cal Fire’s Urban and Community Forestry program, the Natural Resource Agency has the Urban Greening Grant Program, and CalTrans runs the Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program.
Additional funding may be on the way. At the federal level, a bipartisan bill known as the TREES Act was reintroduced recently. If passed, the bill would provide $50 million in funding through 2026 to plant 300,000 trees annually in primarily low-income communities.
Tree Equity is a critical component of urban revitalization for local community groups, especially in an increasingly hot and dry city like Fresno.
“Drive down the street in your favorite neighborhood. . . Maybe it’s Van Ness (Avenue),” Cumming said. “What would that street look like if it didn’t have trees?”
Melissa Montalvo is a reporter with The Fresno Bee and a Report for America corps member. This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.
This story was originally published July 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
