Detroit Needs Trees to Combat Effects of Climate Change

, October 27, 2020

Trees are an important piece of city infrastructure, says writer Brian Allnutt, especially as climate change progresses throughout the Midwest.

Environmental writer Brian Allnutt has written a new piece in Planet Detroit exploring the Detroit canopy and the relationship that Detroit residents have with trees in the city.

He says that some of the residents he spoke with have legitimate concerns about the maintenance of trees in and around their homes. “Things like trees falling on rooftops, trees falling and creating power outages,” Allnutt says, “one woman said a tree had fallen on the street in front of her house and people ended up driving through her front yard for a week so people do have legitimate concerns.”

Climate Challenges Ahead: Water and Heat

Allnutt says that climate studies and experts say that the two biggest impacts of climate change that we are likely to see in Michigan are heat and flooding events.

In looking at the issue of heat, Allnutt says “trees help with cooling in a few different ways: They provide shade and when they emit moisture through leaves that can provide evaporative cooling.” He goes on to say that some studies have shown that the difference between forested and non-forested areas of cities can be as much as 20 degrees. 

As far as flooding issues — something that has certainly become a growing problem here in metro Detroit — Allnutt says trees can intercept as much as 25% of the rainwater coming down in a particular precipitation event. “The leaves are essentially acting as a giant sponge,” says Allnutt, who adds that a good amount of rainwater also gets channeled into the soil through a process called stemflow, which can help keep water out of sewers and basements.

Trees are Crucial Infrastructure

In order for trees to really make a dent in these issues of extreme heat and precipitation in the years to come, Allnutt says here in Detroit, we need to plant enough to get the urban canopy to about 30% of coverage over the city. Right now, Allnutt says we have about 24% of canopy coverage. Eric Candela with the non-profit organization American Forests told Alnutt that if American Forests can ramp up their programming to plant 20,000 trees a year, after 10 years they could get the canopy in Detroit up to 30%. For some perspective, Allnutt says Washington DC is shooting for 40% canopy coverage.
 
Allnutt says that an important part of getting more trees planted includes shifting public sentiment and teaching people about the benefits of trees — that they’re more than just a pleasant decorative landscape feature. He says that they provide important infrastructure and that if we could see the kind of focused financial investment toward tree planting that we saw with streetlights a few years back, Detroit could have much stronger climate resilience in the years to come.  

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  • Anna Sysling is a producer for Detroit Public TV's Great Lakes Now. She is a former producer for Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson.

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