The Climate Gardener’s Guide: Choosing Trees for a Greener Future
The power to shape a greener future lies right at our fingertips - or rather, in our backyards and green spaces.
When it comes to mitigating the effects of climate change, trees are the ultimate solution for enhancing air quality and absorbing carbon emissions. However, certain trees are better suited for the job than others. As we strive for a greener future, it is important that we are aware of the most effective ways to incorporate nature into our residential areas, businesses, and cities to reduce our carbon footprint.
What Can Trees Do for the Environment?
As part of the photosynthesis process, all living plant matter has the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. However, compared to smaller plants, trees possess distinct advantages in their ability to process significantly higher amounts of carbon dioxide due to their impressive stature and extensive root systems. According to the Arbor Day Foundation, one mature tree can absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in just one year.
Creating Urban Forests
While we often focus on planting acres of trees, we cannot neglect our urban spaces. Urban forests, also known as community forests, are a group of trees in cities and suburban areas. This includes any trees in residential areas, along streets, and in parks. Urban forests are great for improving the environment as they promote biodiversity by providing wildlife habitat and reduce energy consumption and costs by providing shade.
The Climate Gardener’s Guide to Choosing the Best Trees for a Greener Future
When thinking about which trees to plant, consider trees that are fast-growing, long-living or mature, have large leaves, are native, and are low maintenance, as these qualities will help store the most carbon and thrive on their own. More than anything, it is important that trees are able to thrive in the environment they are planted in.
Let’s take a look at some of the best trees to improve air quality, promote biodiversity, and reduce our carbon footprint.
London Plane
Believed to be a combination of the American sycamore and the Oriental plane, the London plane is characterized by its mottled bark and broad foliage canopies. Don’t be deceived by the name - although they are commonly found lining the streets of London, they can be found in many temperate regions of the world (the vast majority of where most of the global population lives). These resilient trees help cool down city streets during the hot summer months but are also resistant to colder weather, making them an excellent choice in urban city planning. London planes check off most of the boxes when it comes to choosing a tree to create a more sustainable urban environment, as they act as air purifiers, are easy to transplant, grow quickly, develop tough and massive trunks, and can live for centuries.
Mangrove
Lining swamps and coastal wetlands along the world’s tropical and subtropical regions, Mangroves are nature’s coastal superheroes and play a pivotal role in protecting our environment. These salt-tolerant trees provide essential habitats for marine life but also possess a remarkable ability to sequester carbon. By acting as a carbon sink, mangroves trap organic matter with their dense root systems and lock away carbon in the soil. Mangroves are some of the most effective trees when it comes to capturing our greenhouse gas emissions, annually capturing ten times more carbon than mature tropical forests.
Coastal Redwood
Coastal Redwoods, the towering giants of the Pacific Coast play a significant role in reducing our carbon footprint. By taking in over 250 tons of CO2 within their lifetime, coastal redwoods are one of the most effective carbon sequesters out of all trees due to their extensive foliage canopies and root systems. These magnificent trees also regulate moisture and cooler temperatures for wildlife by providing shade and collecting water from fog, prevent erosion by stabilizing soil and providing nutrients, and have the potential to make an immense impact by storing carbon for thousands of years.
Creating a Greener and Healthier Future
Although global climate change is a systemic problem, everyone should take a part in improving our environment to ensure a future for life on Earth and it all starts with an idea and ambition to make the world a better place. The Trees in Cities Challenge was launched in 2019 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and encourages mayors from across the world to make a pledge to mitigate the effects of climate change and plant more trees in cities.
Change starts with the collective power of individuals working together. Planting a billion acres of trees is not easy, but planting just one tree or adding more plants to our homes, businesses, and cities is one of the easiest ways to begin to make an individual difference and offset our footprint. However, if we want to see monumental change, we need our small businesses and corporations to support carbon neutrality projects.
Planting a tree is one of the several offsetting projects that a small business or corporation can choose to offset their footprint. RyeStrategy has partnered with Cool Effect, which is focused on nature-based carbon neutrality projects all over the globe that your business can support. Using a combination of specialized and affordable services from RyeStrategy, it has never been easier for your business to begin its carbon neutrality journey. By planting a tree or supporting initiatives to protect trees, we are planting the seeds for a greener and healthier future.
Learn about our affordable carbon footprint solutions for small and medium-sized businesses
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About RyeStrategy
Based in Seattle, RyeStrategy is a CDP-accredited, mission-oriented company specialized in carbon accounting, mitigation coaching, and climate disclosure solutions for organizations at any point in their sustainability journey. Learn how RyeStrategy helped Salesforce, Ideascale, and Wazoku achieve their sustainability goals.
From exhaustive carbon footprinting and mitigation coaching, to setting science-based targets and reporting climate data to CDP, SBTi or custom reporting platforms, RyeStrategy acts as a hands-on extension of the team, custom-tailoring services to fulfill climate disclosure requirements easily and accurately.
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