February meetup: Urban Forests: Effects of Urban Heat Islands
Join Seattle Climate Tech + Impact for our first in-person meetup on a fascinating presentation on Urban Forests & the Effects of Urban Heat Islands by Ed Dominguez, Lead Naturalist with Seward Park Audubon Center since 2011.
Ed spent much of summer and fall ‘23 addressing climate change with four presentations in the Seward Park amphitheater in partnership with the Center for Regenerative Solutions and their Accelerator module. He educated the public on findings of the Natural Areas Conservancy temperature study, Cooling Cities -Harnessing Natural Areas to Combat Urban Heat that examined the cooling potential of forests and green spaces. Researchers surveyed six Seattle sites (parks and surrounding neighborhoods) with temperature sensors in the summer of 2022. Seattle Parks and Green Seattle Partnership partnered on this study.
Study Executive Summary (from first linked resource)
2021 was the hottest summer on record in the United States. Cities are documented to be hotter than rural areas, in some cases by over 10°F, and extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States. Strategies such as planting trees and expanding green spaces are known to combat urban heat, but the magnitude of cooling benefits has not been quantified across different segments of the urban forest, such as between trees in landscaped and forested locations, nor across the patchwork of land cover types that make up our cities.
Additional reading
https://naturalareasnyc.org/media/pages/in-print/951f086032-1690225094/nac-cooling-cities.pdf
https://parkways.seattle.gov/2023/08/08/the-cooling-impact-of-trees-in-cities/
Learn more about
🌳 Trees and Urban Climate Mitigation
📉 Rate of Tree Canopy Loss & Mitigation
🌡️ 2022's Record 90+ Degree Days
🏙️ Heat Wave Impact by Neighborhood & Equity
🦉 Wildlife Habitat Implications
About our venue Olmstead:
https://www.olmsteadseattle.com/home
Hip, loungey space serving specialty cocktails & refined comfort food classics.
Happy hour food & drink (from 5-6 PM) · Vegetarian options
We look forward to seeing you in February!