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Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests
- oftenwrong 8y agoIf you want to read the full study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0215846 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- jcwayne 8y ago> The role of street trees in the urban carbon cycle is complex as the environmental costs and benefits of street trees evolve over the course of a tree’s life, with emissions associated with establishment often precluding net greenhouse gas benefits in the early stages of a street tree’s life cycle. The carbon costs associated with nursery production, planting, irrigation, pruning, removal, and disposal are high. Street trees must survive for several decades (26–33 years) to attain carbon neutrality. That's much longer than I would have expected.
- thrower123 8y agoHard to expect anything different. The amount of salt that they get exposed to is horrifying, at least in places that experience cold temperatures and go nuts with the calcium chloride to melt off every speck of snow and ice.
- zaroth 8y agoBetween the salt and the dog urine, hard to believe they survive at all.
- ekianjo 8y agoUrine is just an aqueous solution containing urea (CH4N2O) and you need nitrogen in the ground since it is absorbed by plants and trees as nitrates. Nitrates are usually lacking in the ground so it's actually beneficial for the trees in the end. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/environment/the-nitrogen-cycle-and-trees/article_892f760f-f004-58b8-a223-684b5c3d9fdc.html https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/environment/the-nitro...
- dymk 8y agoNearly all the trees and bushes on my street need barriers around them. The ones that don't will get peed on so much that the plant dies (or all greenery below a certain height will chemically burn).
- NeutronStar 8y agoYeah and if you drink 10L of water in 15min you'll die, doesn't mean water is nefaste to our health. Too much of anything is never good.
- 3131s 8y agoTrees benefit from being around other trees, for example by passing nutrients through their root systems, signalling chemically to warn of threats, sharing beneficial fungi, and being shielded from the elements. It's definitely no surprise that urban trees don't fare as well.
- oftenwrong 8y agoThere are some benefits for street trees that the article points out, including less competition for light, more CO2, more nitrogen deposition, a longer growing season, and the opportunity to tap water/sewer lines.
- saltminer 8y ago> the opportunity to tap water/sewer lines Does this involve breaking pipes? How exactly is it beneficial?
- fredley 8y agoIt's beneficial to the tree.
- mikeash 8y agoUntil they do it too much and get cut down for it, anyway.
- hanniabu 8y agoA majority of instances won't involve breaking a line, although that certainly does happen. The typical case is that they'll thrive off of damp soil around pipes with small existing leaks and leach off that for hydration.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- neuronic 8y agoI wonder if urban trees will adapt to city life - but I guess it depends on where the cities get their new trees. If it's not from the city's tree gene pool we will put forest trees into cities and they won't far any better 200 years from now.
- fathead_glacier 8y agoI think it will also involve selecting seeds only from "better" performing trees from the city tree gene pool. This will then ensure that beneficial mutations / changes survive. An unfortunate requirement of evolution to force progress. In a way it will be survival of the fittest for trees. Unfortunately it might take considerable work from urban planners which I cannot see happening on a large scale any time soon. Maybe a better idea will be to selectively breed species in hard environments and then distribute the seeds to cities that need them. With genetic modifications becoming prevalent in the food industry this might be not far away from happening.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>I think it will also involve selecting seeds only from "better" performing trees from the city tree gene pool. This will then ensure that beneficial mutations / changes survive. An unfortunate requirement of evolution to force progress. >In a way it will be survival of the fittest for trees. Unfortunately it might take considerable work from urban planners which I cannot see happening on a large scale any time soon. I greatly look forward to Cambridge trees that wake up at 10am toke it up 'til noon and complain about life being hard, New Bedford trees that pack heat, Boston trees that think they're the center of the universe and other environment specific adaptations.
- ambicapter 8y ago> In a way it will be survival of the fittest for trees. What if the "fittest" trees end up being the ugliest or most allergy-triggering? My point is if its run by humans, it probably won't really be survival of the "fittest".
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- guilhas 8y agoI think a bigger issue is healthy trees being cut in a lot of urban areas. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5801627/Great-tree-massacre-Councils-cut-110-000-trees-desperate-bid-save-money.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5801627/Great-tree-... Reference to UK, but I can see the same happening in Ireland and Portugal.
- icebraining 8y agoI think a lot of trees were cut down in Portugal due to allergy concerns, despite that being mostly a misconception of the causes, but I can't say I've noticed an actual reduction in the number.
- ekianjo 8y agoHappening in Paris as well: the city keeps cutting trees that are more than 100 years old just because they can: http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-la-place-de-la-nation-perd-ses-platanes-centenaires-10-01-2018-7493418.php http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-la-place-de-la-natio...
- ambicapter 8y agoArticle says that they took down the trees in order to undertake a study on how leak-proof the subway lines beneath the trees were? There's got to be a better way.
- ekianjo 8y agoThat's just the excuse they needed.
- bryan11 8y agoFrequently, the first step when building in the US is to rip down any existing trees and completely clear the property
- freedomben 8y ago
- cicero 8y agoThat's the urban lifestyle in general, isn't it?
- piker 8y agoNope. > Life expectancy was inversely related to levels of rurality. In 2005-2009, those in large metropolitan areas had a life expectancy of 79.1 years, compared with 76.9 years in small urban towns and 76.7 years in rural areas. When stratified by gender, race, and income, life expectancy ranged from 67.7 years among poor black men in nonmetropolitan areas to 89.6 among poor Asian/Pacific Islander women in metropolitan areas. Rural-urban disparities widened over time. In 1969-1971, life expectancy was 0.4 years longer in metropolitan than in nonmetropolitan areas (70.9 vs 70.5 years). By 2005-2009, the life expectancy difference had increased to 2.0 years (78.8 vs 76.8 years). The rural poor and rural blacks currently experience survival probabilities that urban rich and urban whites enjoyed 4 decades earlier. Causes of death contributing most to the increasing rural-urban disparity and lower life expectancy in rural areas include heart disease, unintentional injuries, COPD, lung cancer, stroke, suicide, and diabetes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24439358 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24439358
- barry-cotter 8y agoVery, very confounded correlations study. Given the greater prevalence of schizophrenia in urban dwellers and the negative effects of air pollution we have pretty strong reasons to suspect urban living is less healthy than rural living. But in a modern economy the highly educated and high socioeconomic status people who are disproportionately healthy will almost all live in urban areas. Correlational studies are only ever suggestive. All of these are due to behaviour, not environment. > Causes of death contributing most to the increasing rural-urban disparity and lower life expectancy in rural areas include heart disease Diet > unintentional injuries Working on a farm is ludicrously dangerous > COPD, lung cancer Rural people are poorer and poorer people smoke nope > stroke Diet > suicide Comparatively easy access to guns and poisons > and diabetes Diet
- ekianjo 8y agoIs this a joke? Life expectancy has been increasing as people left the countryside for the cities. It's not even a matter of debate.
- cafard 8y agoSome do remarkably well in Washington, DC, given that they are planted between sidewalk and curb. They don't get much salt, compared to what they would in some northern states, there is that.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoDC (the cities and suburbs around it even more so) has a massive amount of space between sidewalk and curb compared to older east coast cities that weren't planned.
- cafard 8y agoReally? I'd guess that in my neighborhood it's around three feet, certainly not four.
- Joeboy 8y agoLive fast, die young, and leave a good looking copse.
- Xophmeister 8y agoHave your upvote and get out ;)
- cevn 8y agoWow. Best joke I've seen this week at least
- lostmsu 8y agoIt is also a very old one.
- IvyMike 8y agoDid you read 'copse' as 'corpse', or is this really a common joke?
- Upshot_knothole 8y agoIf you hadn't pointed out the difference, not only would I have not noticed the difference in spelling, I'd have also presumed it to be a typo, and not a pun.
- lostmsu 8y agoI did. I am not a native language speaker, so I did not notice the difference.
- superturkey650 8y agoThe original version is old, but I've never seen the pun with "copse"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- debacle 8y agoI'll repost a comment I made a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14156934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14156934 > I know a few arborists. This is generally the cycle: > 1. There is a tree problem. > 2. Muni orders some sort of study after the problem has become unassailable. > 3. Arborist performs a study, finds lack of naturalized species, lack of diversity, lack of appropriately spaced trees. > 4. Muni throws their hands up in the air because money and keeps doing the wrong things.
- buckthundaz 8y agoCivilization is an affront to nature -- it's amazing how few of us understand this.
- crazypyro 8y agoCivilization is nature.
- buckthundaz 8y agoOkay. Look at it structurally: is it Organic or Inorganic?
- newswriter99 8y agoI love the debate about what is or is not "nature" these days. We try to separate humans from other organisms because our use of tools/building nests is so far advanced from say, what an ant produces, or a bird making a nest, or a monkey with a stick. But we're no different from those organisms in terms of tools and nesting, we're just really good at what we do. You could argue humans are different in that we possess self-awareness but that's an entirely different debate. And then there's the "but what about our effect on the planet?" debate. What about it? Some say the effect we have isn't natural. But even that only has weight depending on what you mean by "natural". It's natural for humans to terraform and move earth the way we see fit. At the moment we're at risk of going extinct because of it, but the jury isn't out that we won't use technology to once again survive.
- buckthundaz 8y agoLook at the structural difference between systems of Nature and systems of Civilization.
- freehunter 8y agoAnd yet here you are, sitting in a building supplied by endless electricity, on an electronic device that takes an absolutely insane supply chain to produce, connected to mankind's greatest invention (the Internet), posting on a website that celebrates the most high-tech and capitalist goals imaginable. All while railing against a civilization that is completely possible to exclude yourself from. Being here, making this comment, explicitly puts you, by choice, into "civilization".
- atulatul 8y agoI highly recommend reading the book "The Hidden Life Of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben There is an informative chapter/section called Street Kids about trees planted along the streets primarily in urban areas. How their health is impacted by having no network of close cousins nearby to communicate/ suppy nutrients via root/fungi, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/177164348X https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/1771...
- kaycebasques 8y agoCame here to discuss the same section. It makes sense that urban trees die younger when you think about how heavily the odds are stacked against them: * No network of fellow of trees to share nutrients and information with via their roots, as mentioned above. * Dogs constantly pissing on the trunk. * Smog. * Planted in a small patch of dirt, surrounded by concrete. The dirt itself is usually extremely compacted so no water gets through to the roots. * Gardeners and city workers constantly cutting off branches, exposing inner wood to deadly fungi.
- BurningFrog 8y agoI thought the piss was nutritious for plants?
- atulatul 8y agoNot so much on their trunks.
- aaron_oxenrider 8y agoAs with many things, the quantity matters. Too much of a good thing is not beneficial. If you over fertilize, it can "burn" the plant. That is why most dog owners will find dead spots in their grass where the dog prefers to pee.
- sevensor 8y agoNot to mention people constantly ramming vehicles into them. There's not a tree in my town that doesn't have a big scar on the trunk at bumper level.
- pvaldes 8y agoProbably as consequence of a mix among election of small species for small spaces, contamination, jailed roots and the social pressure to constant prune and mow until killing the tree. Good luck trying to find a sanctuary protected in the next 400 years for a fully fledged oak in the middle of a city.
- ginko 8y agoBut wouldn't that be good for carbon capture? Let the tree grow quickly, then when it dies store the wood somewhere and plant a new one.
- therein 8y agoStore the wood somewhere? Am I naive to think that it will be burned?
- bluGill 8y agoEven burning isn't necessarily bad. Wood burned in nature (which we can simulate easily) will leave a lot of unburned carbon behind in the form of charcoal. You have to deal with the air pollution though (which is a real problem, but been going on for longer than humans).
- nanomonkey 8y agoAn article posted here recently (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/botanical-sexism-cultivates-home-grown-allergies/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/botanical-se...) stating that urban trees are also predominantly male (fruitless), which is causing a rise in air pollen levels.
- arjunbanker 8y agoare there any dense urban areas designed to coexist with healthy forests?
- framebit 8y agoArguably Atlanta, GA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_tree_canopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_tree_canopy
- papito 8y agoSo do the people. It's the only way to be.
- tosser0001 8y agoIn my city the DPW constantly drops a sapling in a sidewalk cut out with no after care or follow up so they just die within a year or two. It seems like a real waste. I’ve always wondered what would happen if instead they really prepared the soil and waited to see what trees naturally sprouted, then removed all but the healthiest looking one.
- kingkawn 8y agoI wonder if my house plants are suffering socio-chemical isolation by being potted solo...
- cwkoss 8y agoMore light, more CO2, more pollution. Makes sense that cities could encourage faster growth and death.
- gdubs 8y agoHaven’t read the full study but I’m curious to see how much diversity is factored in. In a lot of cities you see monocultures of the same “signature” tree — which often leads to disease. My instinct would be to focus on mixing things up, and making sure there’s a wide diversity of trees; not just overall, but co-planting so there’s trees mixed with shrubs, grasses, wildflowers, etc. Mimicking the multiple vertical layers of a forest also maximizes photosynthesis so you get more carbon storage per meter.