@UrbanTreeJustice

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Trees - especially large, mature trees - reduce pollution, noise, and heat in cities and are critical public health infrastructure. Defenders of North SeaTac Park is working to stop tree removal on an est 100+ acres of public land for airport expansion in an urban community 4 miles south of Seattle where environmental health disparities are severe and the county health dept has recommended expanding trees and green space. Sign our petition at KCTreeEquity.org
UrbanTreeJusticeDec 12, 2022
Planting new trees is too often offered as compensation for cutting down existing older trees. But compared with newly-planted trees, which often don't survive their 1st seasons, "large-diameter trees store disproportionally massive amounts of carbon" & provide much better habitat for biodiversity, resilience to drought and fire, and urban heat-reduction." The first emphasis should be on proforestation - protecting existing trees and forest https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.594274/full #Proforestation #TreeJustice
Large Trees Dominate Carbon Storage in Forests East of the Cascade Crest in the United States Pacific Northwest

Large-diameter trees store disproportionally massive amounts of carbon and are a major driver of carbon cycle dynamics in forests worldwide. In the temperate forests of the western United States, proposed changes to Forest Plans would significantly weaken protections for a large portion of trees greater than 53 cm (21 inches) in diameter (herein referred to as “large-diameter trees”) across 11.5 million acres (∼4.7 million ha) of National Forest lands. This study is among the first to report how carbon storage in large trees and forest ecosystems would be affected by a proposed policy. We examined the proportion of large-diameter trees on National Forest lands east of the Cascade Mountains crest in Oregon and Washington, their contribution to overall aboveground carbon (AGC) storage, and the potential reduction in carbon stocks resulting from widespread harvest. We analyzed forest inventory data collected on 3,335 plots and found that large trees play a major role in the accumulated carbon stock of these forests. Tree AGC (kg) increases sharply with tree diameter at breast height (DBH; cm) among five dominant tree species. Large trees accounted for 2.0 to 3.7% of all stems (DBH ≥ 1” or 2.54 cm) among five tree species; but held 33 to 46% of the total AGC stored by each species. Pooled across the five dominant species, large trees accounted for 3% of the 636,520 trees occurring on the inventory plots but stored 42% of the total AGC. A recently proposed large-scale vegetatio...

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