Statisticians are sharing strategies to identify ‘super trees’ for urban areas that help mitigate pollution, flooding and heat.

A new study by collaborators at Rice University, the Houston Health Department’s environmental division and Houston Wilderness establishes live oaks and American sycamores as champions among 17 «super trees» that will help make the city more livable and lays out a strategy to improve climate and health in vulnerable urban areas.

Best of all for Houston, they’re already implementing their plan in the city, and now offer what they’ve learned to others.

The open access study in the journal Plants People Planet — led by Houston Wilderness President Deborah January-Bevers and colleagues at Rice and in city government — lays out a three-part framework for deciding what trees are the right ones to plant, how to identify places where planting will have the highest impact and how to engage with community leadership to make the planting project a reality.

Using Houston as a best-case example, the collaborators determined what trees would work best in the city based on their ability to soak up carbon dioxide and other pollutants, drink in water, stabilize the landscape during floods and provide a canopy to mitigate heat.

With that information, the organizers ultimately identified a site to test their ideas. With cooperation from the city and nonprofit and corporate landowners, they planted 7,500 super trees on several sites near the Clinton Park neighborhood and adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel. (They actually planted 14 species, eliminating those that bear fruit to simplify maintenance for the landowners.) Along with planting native trees, the partners conducted a tree inventory and removed invasive species.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Rice University. Original written by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.