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City Pollution Stunts Rural Trees As Urban Trees Thrive
Bad Credit Credit Creditres Scientists who set out to gauge the impact of urban pollutants on trees have made a surprising discovery trees planted near New York City's congested mean streets actually grow twice as large as their rural counterparts.
U.S. cities have lost more than 20 percent of their trees in the past 10 years, due primarily to urban sprawl and highway construction, an environmental group said this week. The vast tree loss contributes to environmental and health problems that have cost an estimated $234 billion, the group American Forests said in a study released at the annual National Urban Forest Conference. "America's cities are developing a huge tree deficit, " said American Forests Vice President Gary Moll.
Bad Consolidation Credit Debt The results clash with assumptions that cities filled with concrete, asphalt and polluted skies are inhospitable to plants. But they don't mean the Big Apple is a plant paradise, either.
year study of 448 urban areas using satellite imaging to compare with a similar study 10 years ago found 21 percent less tree canopy. "Trees preserve our water and prevent flooding, " Moll said. "They remove pollution from the air. They cool the environment and reduce the need for air conditioning." He said the loss of trees had contributed to a rise in respiratory diseases in the United States.
Bad Company Credit Repair Instead, the researchers attribute the stunted growth in rural area trees to higher sustained levels of ozone at those sites in comparison to the city. The study traced the growth of identical cottonwood trees in both kinds of locations.
largest city in Africa, ranking just below Cairo in its vastness. With its endless crowds, severe traffic congestion, shocking pollution and strong currents of danger, this chaotic urban jungle can be overwhelming to visitors, but those willing to give the city a chance will be rewarded with some unique and valuable experiences. The city has a thriving nightlife encompassing a colossal number nightclubs and live music venues that offer a jumble of musical influences blended harmoniously into the unique riffs and rhythms of West Africa.
Bad Card Credit Credit "In the country, the trees were about up to my waist. In the city, they were almost over my head it's really dramatic," said Jillian W. Gregg, the study's lead author.
The report said urban deforestation was a problem across the country, growing cities in the Sun Belt. Moll cited Atlanta as the worst urban area for tree loss, while Charlotte, North Carolina, and San Diego were the two best. "Charlotte looked at Atlanta's experience and decided they didn't want to follow it, " he said. American Forests urged cities, real estate developers and individuals to protect forests and called for replacing 10 percent of the lost tree cover by the planting of 1.7 billion trees over the next 10 years.
Bad Car Credit Loan The findings appear in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature. The work was done by a team from Cornell University and the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.
One city feature to appreciate, the street name system, makes finding your way around the city easy. Because early Americans couldn't read, they planted chestnut trees on one street, pine trees on another, spruce trees on the next, and so on. Therefore, the streets are named after trees with the cross streets numbered. Today, the streets are lined with gorgeous, huge trees!
Bad Credit Loan Mortgage Ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog linked to respiratory ailments in humans, can also slow the growth of some plants. While ozone near the ground is harmful, it is beneficial high in the stratosphere where it blocks dangerous ultraviolet radiation from reaching the ground or oceans.
Auto Bad Credit Loan Even though one-hour peak ozone levels could be high in New York City, Gregg said cumulative ozone exposures at the rural sites were up to 50% higher than in the city.
Bad Credit Mortgage Refinance Rural ozone starts in cities as "ozone precursors" from auto and industrial emissions that form ozone by chemically interacting with sunlight. In the city, high concentrations of one of those precursors, nitric oxide, can have what Gregg called a "scavenging reaction" that scrubs ozone from urban air once it forms and keeps overall ozone levels moderate.
Bad Credit Refinance But once ozone is blown out of the city to the countryside, where nitric oxide concentrations are low, the ozone remains in the atmosphere longer. And as ozone's precursors drift toward the country they produce even more ozone, miles from traffic jams and smokestacks.
Bad Credit Mortgage Second Other scientists who did not contribute to the research said the new study's conclusions suggest that scientists need to look more closely at the secondary effects of urban pollution on rural areas.
Bad Credit Loan Student "It's one of the most compelling negative correlations between plant growth and ozone concentration that I've seen," said Eric Kruger, an associate professor of tree physiology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Bad Card Credit Gregg and her colleagues planted genetically identical cottonwood trees rooted from cuttings taken from the same tree at seven sites four in New York City's boroughs, and the three others in rural Long Island or upstate New York.
Bad Credit Financing To eliminate the possibility that soil variations could account for any growth differences, soil from rural sites was moved to the urban test plots and urban soil was moved to rural areas.
Bad Credit Home Loan Mortgage The trees were planted in pots buried in the ground and were irrigated with the same amount of water, Gregg said.
Bad Credit Loan People Over three growing seasons, saplings grew robustly in New York City, while lagging far behind in the rural areas.
Bad Card Credit Credit People "No matter what soil I grew them in they always grew twice as large in New York City," said Gregg, who said she was initially perplexed by the unexpected results.
Bad Credit Guaranteed Loan Later experiments in controlled settings found the same trees, when exposed to high levels of ozone, indeed grew half as large.
Bad Credit Refinancing David F. Karnosky, a professor of forest genetics at the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich., said the next step should be long-term studies aimed at assessing how high ozone levels impact other tree species in other regions.
Bad Credit Equity Home Loan Associated Press - 7/9/2003
Topic: Air Pollution
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