Date: Thursday, January 18th, 2024
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm (noon)
Location: The Morton Arboretum – Cudahy Auditorium in the Research Building
4100 Illinois Route 53 Lisle, Illinois 60532
Speaker: Michelle Catania – Green Industry Outreach Coordinator, The Morton Arboretum
Topic: Michelle will discuss soil health related to urban trees and the role municipalities can take in improving air quality using vegetative barriers.
Healthy, undisturbed soil is a key component to achieve future tree canopy goals. Unfortunately, soils with ideal characteristics at supporting long-lived trees are becoming increasingly rare in the built environment. As we continue to emphasize the ecosystem services our urban trees provide, understanding below-ground conditions should be a key component to this discussion. Healthy soils offer greater stormwater storage during rain events and can provide sufficient reservoirs of water to get trees through prolonged periods of drought. Improvements to urban soils in the built environment will lead to healthy trees. Healthy, diverse forests are also better at combating pest and disease outbreaks as they have greater resources to overcome a potential infestation if they are not stressed.
Improvements to urban green spaces is a major topic for sustainability initiatives. As we put more emphasis on trees as part of the solution for healthier urban systems and carbon sequestration, we can strategically use trees to reduce the health impacts of poor air quality from anthropogenic sources. The combustion of fuels, road dust, and stationary emitters such as factories are some of the sources of human-made particulate matter in the air. These particles are too small to settle out close to the source and have the ability to stay afloat in the air where they can be inhaled. Those most negatively impacted are developing children and individuals prone to cardiopulmonary issues. Over the last 3 years Michelle has been working on understanding how trees are capable at combating particulate matter when planned well. Incorporating vegetative buffers should be part of the sustainability initiatives in your town. This solution can be used to separate playgrounds, schoolyards and other areas where we recreate and I feel that municipal foresters can help lead these efforts.
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