Researchers in the University at Albany’s Department of Geography and Planning are receiving $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support a new project that aims to improve the health of Albany’s urban forest and educate the next generation of local climate leaders. The project, Urban Climate Adaptation of Forest Ecosystems with Disadvantaged Communities and Youth in Albany New York, or Urban CAFÉ DAY, is part of a $1 billion investment from the USDA’s Forest Service to expand access to trees and green spaces in communities and neighborhoods nationwide, strengthen climate resilience, and create economic opportunities for underserved communities. Interviewed on this episide of The Engagement Ring are Dr. Andrei Lapenas, professor and program director of the Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy MS in the Department of Geography & Planning at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Albany, and Dr. Scott Kellogg, educational director at the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, NY.
UAlbany Department of Geography and Planning
Radix Ecological Sustainability Center
Resource mentioned by Dr. Lapenas:
Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
The Engagement Ring, Episode 18: Expanding the Urban Forest – The Urban CAFÉ Day Project
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to the Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
SCOTT KELLOGG:
We believe that there's a value to integrating green space. agricultural space, ecological space into high density urban environments, such as Albany that are going to be accessible to a great number of people, particularly to people without a lot of financial means, on a regular basis.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Researchers in the University at Albany's Department of Geography and Planning are receiving $5 million from the US Department of Agriculture to support a new project that aims to improve the health of Albany's urban forest and educate the next generation of local climate leaders. The project, Urban Climate Adaptation of Forest Ecosystems with Disadvantaged Communities and Youth in Albany, New York, or Urban CAFÉ DAY, is part of a $1 billion investment from the USDA Forest Service to expand access to trees and green spaces in communities and neighborhoods nationwide, strengthen climate resilience and create economic opportunities for underserved communities.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
This project is targeting one of the ways by which we can adapt to future climate. We can change our environment. We can change it on a such a way that it will be bearable for humans and that's why the presence of tree is an urban environment is extremely important.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here's my conversation with Dr. Andre Lapenas and Dr. Scott Kellogg.
[Music fades]
MARY HUNT:
Dr. AndreI Lapenas is the program director of the Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy MS program in the Department of Geography and Planning at UAlbany. He earned his PhD at the State Hydrological Institute St. Petersburg, Russia and his MS in Geography with a specialization in Oceanography from St. Petersburg University, Russia. Dr. Kellogg is the educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, New York. He holds a PhD of Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a master’s in environmental science from Johns Hopkins University, and is visiting faculty at Bard College where he teaches in the masters in environmental education program. I’m also proud to say he's an adjunct at UAlbany many in the Urban Planning and in Biodiversity Conservation and Policy Program. Welcome, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have you.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Thank you.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Thank you.
MARY HUNT:
AndreI, let me ask you. Planting trees seems like a simple approach to a very complex issue, climate change. Though, when we refer to it as urban forestry, it takes on a lot of gravitas, much more. What is meant by the term urban forestry. And what's the science behind this approach?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes. Okay, I would like to cite, I guess, a recent interview with Bill Gates, who said that, just by planting trees, we won't resolve climate change. And I understand why he provided this quote, because typically, trees they linked in our minds to two very important issues. One is oxygen in atmosphere, and another is carbon dioxide. You can hear in media things like that people call forests, global forests on our planet as the lungs of our planet, right. If you look at the balance of oxygen, you'll see that every year forests, they produce a lot, a lot of oxygen, but they also take a lot of oxygen for oxidation of material, the organic matter they produce. And if you look at the net kind of impact of forest on oxygen balance in our planet, you will find that this effect is very small. It's less than 1% from the concentration of oxygen, which we have now. If you take into account the role of forest as a carbon sink, so as a method by which we can remove carbon from the atmosphere, again, every year, you will find that forest absorbs a substantial amount of carbon, but at the same time, every year, they release a lot of carbon through decay and recycling of leaves, branches and so on. So yes, by planting, just planting trees, even you know, in large and extremely large amounts won’t resolve the issue of mitigating climate change. But in addition to mitigation, there are a couple of other attitudes towards climate change. One is adaptation. And another is I don't know how to call it, ah to do nothing. Business as usual right. So, we do nothing and everything will be alright somehow. Till recently, in science, we have most funds directed towards mediation. And that's development of new photovoltaics, development of wind energetics and so on. Adaptations they receive much less attention, especially in terms of budget till recently. So, what this project is trying to do is this project is targeting one of the ways by which we can adapt to future climate. Again, this adaptation won't be 100% adaptation, so you can do nothing in future. However, forest they… ah, especially urban forest, they help to answer, to address several important things. Urban forest, I would say that this is any trees, any green plants growing within the borders of municipalities. That's your urban forests. And yes, urban forest, always taking into account of global carbon balance when countries like the United Nations, for example, they exchange information on the carbon balance of individual countries, they do include not only rural forests, like real forests, but also urban forests, which we have within the borders of cities. And I would start by explaining why they are important, I will start rather from, you know, with kind of different, I will change perspective, from climate, to quality of life. I would say of quality of life. Recently I watched very interesting series, ah, Public TV. I think it was on Netflix. It was Live to 100. I don't know if you've heard about this. It's a great, great program, which investigates the so-called Blue Zones, the areas around the world where people live more than 100 years. And there are several important factors for these areas, like sense of community, and so on. But what is interesting that in each of these areas, they have places where people can meet each other which can really generate a sense of community. It could be churches, but it's also very often parks, and a good example from the series… I think the name of the reporter is Buettner… he did a wonderful job with investigating all these questions. In Singapore, he found that people actually like to meet, bring their children, of course to green spaces, they do the exercises there in the morning, and all this factor into a longer lifestyle, into longer lifespan. So, if you look from this perspective, yes, we have some issues in the United States with our urban environment, which very often lacks green spaces. In our departments, several years ago, we had one master’s thesis was defended on the topic of the relationship between health of several, you know, several communities, and percentage in this community is covered by green space and presence of parks. And they did find positive correlation. So better the health, I mean, the larger the area covered with green spaces, the better the health of the community. That's very, I think, straightforward answer why we should be doing that despite the fact that we cannot solve global warming problem by planting more trees. In other issues. Yeah, I just want to say that there is another couple of issues which are very important. And this second issue is of course, temperature control. During hot summer days, dry days, you don't want to be on open space like parking lot. You want to spend your time again in the park under the tree canopy and the difference in temperature could be very dramatic. It could be 10, 20 degrees Fahrenheit difference just locally. So, from this perspective, you can say yes, we do not we cannot solve again this global warming problem, but we are addressing issue of adaptation, where we can change our environment. So, we can change it in such a way that it will be bearable for humans and that's why the presence of trees in an urban environment is extremely important. Finally, trees, not perhaps finally, but another issue is quality of air. Trees work as a good barrier for dust, for example. They help to reduce the dust drifts in the cities. And actually, they also work in winter. We pay less attention in winter, but they do work in winter by protecting streets from the snowdrift. For example, if you have dense, you know layers of trees planted around and along the roads or highways and so on. So, I would say that, from this perspective, if you look from the quality of life, from adaptation to climate change, it absolutely does make sense to me to plant more trees.
MARY HUNT:
Well, I think it's interesting because you hear the term urban forestry, and it almost sounds like an oxymoron. A forest is as far from a city setting as you imagine, but what we're really talking about is creating these green spaces. Talk a little bit Scott, if you will, about what kind of spaces are you creating. You're planting trees, creating parks. What other kinds of spaces fall within this?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
All of the above, really. We believe that there's a value to integrating green space, agricultural space, ecological space into high density urban environments, such as Albany that are going to be accessible to a great number of people, particularly to people without a lot of financial needs, on a regular basis. While we have a small urban to rural gradient in Albany, which means you know, we are surrounded by farms and fields and forests, and you don't have to go very far to access those. But if you don't own a car, those places aren't going to be accessible to you, nor are they going to be necessarily places that are culturally welcoming to you, either. So, we believe that having these spaces in the places where people actually live has important value from a justice and equity perspective.
MARY HUNT:
I think it's interesting that AndreI brought up the idea of quality of life, because I think a lot of people might make the assumption that geography and planning, city planning, it's about utility. It's about building roads and bridges and planning things. But it seems like there's been an increasing importance on incorporating or considering quality of life in planning urban areas. Is that true?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
I'm not a city planner. I'm a climatologist. And for me urban climate was always about the impact of humans on the environment. As you know, in summer, the difference in temperature, between urban area and rural surroundings can be three, four, five degrees Fahrenheit, or even five degrees Celsius sometimes, if you consider for example, difference within in temperature within Manhattan, which is densely populated, and less populated areas of New Jersey, just across the river. The difference could be ten degrees Fahrenheit easily. And so, from this perspective, people who live in Manhattan, they have perhaps more deteriorated quality for their environment, less pleasant environment than people who live in, you know, in New Jersey, so of course, there is a component of, of kind of human, if you wish, it's a feedback, right? So, we create this environment by ourselves by burning fossil fuel, by burning more fossil fuels within the city borders, by heating or cooling our buildings, which will contribute to the large urban heat islands. And now we're talking about basically eliminating this disparity, and making conditions more livable in cities. So, that's I guess, you know, definitely, we should include this. In other words, we should include absolutely this quality of life question there.
MARY HUNT:
You mentioned the environmental justice issue, that oftentimes the green spaces or urban forests don't exist in underserved communities. Can you talk a little bit about that? Why is that important and why has that been the case?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Sure. Radix does its work in the south end of Albany, which is a formerly redlined community. federal policy up until the mid-20th century that was more or less a policy of enforced segregation through banks and loans. That has resulted in decades of systemic disinvestment in those communities. The city of Albany has an adopt-a-tree program, which is great, but it still requires a 50% match from residents. So in under resourced neighborhoods where you have generational poverty coupled with low rates of homeownership, that's going to combine to result in there being fewer trees and overall, greatly reduced tree canopy density. All this compounding for all the reasons that Andrei mentioned resulting in higher temperatures, resulting in low air quality. We have neighborhoods in the south end of Albany where we have communities with asthma rates approaching 30 percent, which is way above the national baseline. So, really thinking about it through a lens of climate justice, it's really quite essential right, for mitigating the impacts of the urban heat island, which is really the core of the idea of climate justice is that the effects of climate change are going to impact the world's poorest and communities of color, the first and the worst, particularly in low income neighborhoods where people can't even afford air conditioning. So, when we're thinking about it in that way, we start to see that trees are a form of critical infrastructure in and of themselves that needs to be taken as seriously and given equal importance as we do to water lines or to electrical lines or to gas lines.
MARY HUNT:
Andrei, tell me a little bit about the individual components of the Urban CAFÉ DAY project.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes, of course, there are several steps which we should take in order to address issues which we mentioned earlier about the equity and development of urban forest as adaptation to climate change. First, we will establish intergenerational committee, intergenerational council of faculty, community representatives and students to address the issue. So, this council or committee will be governing body of our climate ecosystem-based climate adaptation center. So, it's a climate adaptation center, which we’ll set, and it will be council for center. Second, we would like to establish nurseries. Again, the extent to which will we'll be able to develop these nurseries is unknown to us because we didn't get the final numbers from the U.S. Forest Service about funding. However, in original proposals, we have plans for establishing nursery here at University at Albany. The nursery should be run by UAlbany students. Of course, most of the students will be from Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy. And we also are going to create youth crews, the crews of students who will help Scott and the community plant trees and provide certain maintenance for the trees, because I'm sure Scott will address that, but maintenance is perhaps a more serious issue than planting trees. So, the center will be established, and we hope that creation of this nursery will be an additional revenue stream for the center, which can be used to support the same students and youth crews, which will do the planting of trees and provide education for communities as well. Another issue is, of course, educational component of the grant. And this will be basically the results of this grant. So better to say the results of implementations which we go into to actually to make in this grant will be used in several courses here at UAlbany. So, it will be feedback to education from the grant, but at the same time, our students they will participate there. The idea of intergenerational committee is I think, a very important one because this project should last not just the five years which we received money for, you know, to start this project, but it should go well beyond this five years when some of us will, you know, will transit to other, you know, to other parts of our life but youth who started with us will have this memory about how it started and what should be done eventually and what are our goals.
MARY HUNT:
You mentioned youth. We’re talking about the students at UAlbany, but I imagine we're talking about city of Albany youth as well. Is that correct, Scott?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Yeah. So, Radix runs a program called Eco Justice Associates, which is a year-round program. During the year students, local high school students aged 14 to 18 receive stipends and they come to work at Radix from four to seven in the afternoon. During the summer that transitions to a summer program that's funded through the city Summer Youth Employment Program and in either instances, the youth are involved in helping us maintaining all the various systems that we have at Radix and doing community service, everything from gardening, to composting to food redistribution to animal care to river remediation, and of course, tree planting, and tree maintenance and watering, which is a huge component of it. So, we would love to have our youth continue to be involved in that. It would be fantastic if they could be themselves partners in the in the SUNY program. And for them really to be feeling a sense of care and ownership over the work that they're doing. This is their neighborhoods, and they're going to be the ones most directly benefiting from it in the decades to come, because that's really the timescale that we're thinking about when it comes to tree planting. And really a core component of our youth program is there's work and there's learning involved, but we spend the last hour of it in discussion in one form or another typically about local environmental justice, climate justice issues, to underscore the relevancy of this work to their own lives and lived experience.
MARY HUNT:
Many components of this project must have taken a great deal of planning. What was the planning process and thinking through the different steps and the different layers and the different opportunities like? How long did that take you? How did you come together to do that?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
I'll be honest. We learned about this opportunity in late April, and we had to submit proposal in mid-May. So, we had only one and a half months to go over it. Thanks to our partners and support from the University, we were able to do this.
MARY HUNT:
Well, I guess that's what comes from having the expertise to begin with dealing with the issues over years and over time. You're ready to go when an opportunity presents itself. You have a clear idea.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
What we see now with the you know, with this new money from the Inflation Reduction Act, coming to climate adaptations, is actually second large attempt within the United States. To plant a large amount of trees first, was actually conducted in 1930s at the end of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt was using this as a means to fight inflation, and actually to employ the population. So, at that time, 190,000 miles of windbreaks were planted mostly in the middle of the U.S. Midwest, and places where people still have these windbreaks -- I visited several of them – they are actually quite happy. People go hunting there in the Midwest. So, it's basically a forest which will be soon one hundred years old. However, in places where trees, they were removed basically, slashed for timber, and so on in 1950s they do not get the same benefits of a local, microclimate which people with a forest could have. Most of trees in 1950s they were cut for, again, cut for timber. They were cut because at that time, electricity was quite cheap and cheap electric pumps became available. So instead of using windbreaks for snow accumulation through the winter, for reduction of non-productive (unable to make out) transportation, they just used pumps to bring more water to the surface. So, it was a kind of move towards sustainable agriculture. And so, I hope that this time with urban forests we’ll do things right, and they will stay for much longer time.
MARY HUNT:
Well, the $1 billion that's going to this project nationally, I guess every state will receive a share of this. So, every state will have its project, which makes it very interesting because we're all in different climates. We're all in different regions. So, our approaches will be different. I'm curious, in the northeast, or in the Albany area, what do you envision? What kind of trees will you be planting? What kind of greenery will thrive and meet the needs and hopefully help with adaptation that year?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Scott has some of these trees in his nursery now. So perhaps he is better equipped to answer that question.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Sure. So, well as you mentioned Radix has been in the middle of a project called the South End Bio Cultural Diversity Forest. We've been running since November of 2021. That was funded by the State Department of Environmental Conservation. And through that, to date we've planted 175 trees at no cost to South End residents in the south end of Albany. And as far as species selection goes, we have a number of criteria. One is to increase the diversity of forests in both species’ diversity, but also genetic diversity since many urban forests are lacking in both. This is a constraint of the landscaping nursery industry, which typically only offers certain species that may have sort of what are called landscape appeal. Primarily for aesthetic reasons, right, but those aren't necessarily going to be the best choices or the most resilient trees to be growing. So, increasing species diversity, and that's one thing that we've been able to do. And not having contractual obligations to any particular nursery, having been able to source trees from all around… there's a number of great nurseries that grow large caliper, meaning large diameter trees, that are bare root out in Western New York. And we also have been planting trees that have been grown from seed, which I think is really important because each tree then is genetically unique. So, you have not only species diversity, but genetic diversity, which is critically important. Worcester, Massachusetts, for instance, fifty percent of the trees they have in the city, I've been told are clones of the red maple, which is low species diversity, but also genetic diversity. So, if a disease were to come through, it would just tear through like wildfire, because there's no innate resistance that you would have in a diverse population. So that's an important component of it. We've also been putting a lot of emphasis on planting trees that are edible, because well, food grows on trees. And in the South End, in addition to suffering from the effects of poor air quality, and the urban heat island is also a food swamp, food apartheid neighborhood. So, planting apples and pears and persimmons, and pawpaws and pecans and hickories, whole variety of berry fruit and nut producing trees. Municipalities historically have been reluctant to plant fruiting trees, because well, they say they make a mess. And my response is, well, food insecurity is also a mess. And the last aspect of this in terms of species consideration is to take into account this idea of assisted migration, which is a little bit controversial within forestry and tree planting circles. And that's the idea of selecting trees that we're currently on the northern extent of their native range, or perhaps even slightly outside of in anticipation of the fact that we're going to be having a much warmer climate in the decades to come. Projections I've seen show in the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, New York State having climate more similar to that of Pennsylvania or even Virginia. So, we want to be planting trees that are going to be able to withstand and thrive in hotter conditions. So, that means looking beyond the species that may be typically have historically been planted in urban plantings.
MARY HUNT:
You touched on it when you talk a little bit about the South End and the issues that are particularly important or urgent in the South End. But the city of Albany itself is a unique place in terms of it being a capital city, the history of Albany with the way construction of the Empire State Plaza has affected the city. Can you touch a little bit on or paint a picture of the challenges that might be facing you in in trying to do this in the city of Albany as it is configured?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Sure. Well, first of all, I'll say that, you know, Albany is a great city, and I've been living here for fourteen years and happy to be here, but it certainly has its challenges. I mean, it is a second tier, post-industrial city. And you know, probably about fifty percent of its potentially taxable real estate basis is owned by state agencies or nonprofits or universities. And that you know, has the end result of diminishing the amount of tax dollars that would otherwise be available to similarly sized cities that could be used for projects, such as tree planting. It also, in my opinion, has been the victim of a number of highly ill-conceived urban renewal programs of the mid-20th century like you mentioned, the construction of the Empire State Plaza, which resulted in one of the highest per capita displacements of a population of people as a consequence of an urban renewal program in the country, effectively bisected the city of Albany and has had long lasting social and economic devastating consequences. That along with the construction of interstate 787, which has cut residents off from the Hudson River, which historically is the reason why humans ever lived here in the first place… was because of the relationship to that river. And you know, these things are, especially in the case of the highway, recognized now as having been errors. But the question is now, well, how do you move forward? How do we regenerate around the edges, which, to me is a fascinating question?
MARY HUNT:
It’s not as if there are a lot of patches of dirt that you could just start digging and planting in. And I mean, there's a lot of sidewalks, and concrete and bricks and mortar and big state agency buildings. Well, how do you get in there and change it so you can start to build these build this environment?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Yeah, well, I mean…
MARY HUNT:
Is there construction that has to take place?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
One thing about being a second-tier post-industrial city is there actually is an abundance of vacant lots in the city of Albany that could be repurposed for a variety of means for urban agriculture, for composting, and also for being orchards or for being green space. So, a lot of interest in doing that. And next to that, we yeah, we've been creating new tree pits in the South End. One thing that we were able to get with our previous grant is a concrete saw and have actually cut new sidewalk pits for planting trees where they previously didn't exist, which in… I like to look at that as really perforating the impermeable landscape of the urban environment, right, which is creating a space for trees to go but also creating an open for stormwater infiltration, right, which is often a benefit that's overlooked as far as street trees, right. And as climate change advances, we're going to be looking at increasing extreme rainfall as a consequence of, you know, warmer atmosphere being able to hold more moisture. So, we need to cut holes in these impervious oceans of asphalt and concrete we have in cities and allow spaces where the water can get into the ground and be soaked up and absorbed, so, to diminish the flashiness of the urban watershed, which is ultimately going to result in fewer combined sewer overflows. So, it's really fascinating to me how all these different environmental and social aspects interconnect with one another.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Right, yeah, over the last 30 years, we have actually about thirty percent increase in precipitation at, you know, in upstate New York. That's already happened. And, as Scott mentioned, the trees, they play a very important role in erosion control. And if they control erosion, they control also amount of contamination, which goes to Hudson River. So, we also, you know, we can say that, if we do things right here, will help people down the stream with the quality of water as well.
MARY HUNT:
You touched on it, I think, in talking about training students or working with students who will go on to be, you know, this is their, this is their world. And so, they'll go on to be living and working in this world. So, this program has an economic development and a workforce development component, doesn't it?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes, it does. Again, as I mentioned, we would like to create youth crews, which will work with local communities and with the city on planting trees and the role of the University will be in training of these crews. Again, together with the Radix Center. It has a significant educational component as well. So yes, we will develop workforce for this grant. That's… absolutely, yeah.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
One thing I'd like to add to that too… where it's really important to have a labor component is in actually keeping trees alive. Planting trees is relatively easy compared to the work involved in keeping them alive, particularly during the first two summers. Each tree planted in the sidewalk requires about twenty gallons of water per week. Sidewalks are incredibly hot spaces, in fact, really hostile environments to plant a tree, right. So, they really need a lot of support, particularly if we have dry summers, and a lot of people don't really recognize exactly how much that work is. Water weighs, you know, eight pounds a gallon. So that's a lot of weight. So, but that's one area where we've been really grateful to have youth involved and hopefully more so. In our case, we actually use electric cargo tricycles to deliver jugs of waters to the trees and keep them alive and involve the youth in that process of care and nurturing.
MARY HUNT:
This is a five-year project. How do we continue this beyond the five years and how do you find the funding to do so?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to create nursery and if we’re really lucky, I hope that we will be able to use the University greenhouse for that. Although this is still open question. I'm not sure what the final answer will be about this. But if we create nursery here, we'll be able to compensate some of our expenses in the future by selling the same seedlings, the same trees to the city, maybe not just Albany, but other cities in upstate New York and that will be one stream of additional revenue. Our second stream of additional revenue will be from the research component of this all-new center. The center will be on climate adaptations, and we hope to develop basically tools for climate adaptations in the future and disseminate them through the University, for example.
MARY HUNT:
What do you hope other communities will learn from your experience? There are a number of communities in New York State that are going to benefit from this funding, but not all. So, I'm assuming they'll be looking to you and you'll be sharing your experience with them? What is it you hope you can share with them?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
We hope that they will see that it's possible; it's plausible to do in our environment. Yes, I know that 5 million sounds like a lot of money, but I would say it was limited. With limited funds. it's possible to do and that it will lead to benefits for communities. That's the most important part. So, if they see that there are benefits from what we're doing, they definitely will follow.
MARY HUNT:
And what specific outcomes are you hoping to achieve?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Ah, well, I cannot give you exact number in terms of mitigation of urban heat island, for example, but I think it will be visible; it will be measurable kind of numbers for areas where we'll plant new trees. So, we're going to reduce the heat island over the city of Albany by planting more trees. That's quite certain. Second of course is the educational component which we will do together with the community. And the third one is basically training of new workforce, as we discussed it earlier, which is extremely important for addressing climate adaptation issues.
MARY HUNT:
I want to say I read somewhere about tree canopy. Scott, explain what that means. My simplistic explanation of that is it's the coverage of trees over the city.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Sure.
MARY HUNT:
Where does Albany stand now? And where does it want to go? Is there… it sounds like there actually are percentages or…
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Yes, in my opinion, the measure, the metric that we should be using for determining success when it comes to tree planting programs is not so much the number of trees that we plant, but rather the current and projected tree canopy density because… well, currently, we're also limited by the presence of power lines, which limit us to planting smaller trees underneath them, which are certainly better than no trees at all. But the total amount of shade that a small tree will ever be able to produce is by orders of magnitude less than that of what a large tree will be able to grow. So we get quite excited when we find spots where there are no overhead power lines where we can plant really large trees and personally I think a long term goal for the city of Albany, and every city for that matter, should be the undergrounding of power lines which you know is a long term project that is expensive and it has complications but that ultimately will allow us to plant trees that will grow into giants so they’re going to really create significant shading for urban environments.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes, I can only add that there is one more resource for increasing canopy overall when it's a large area of our roofs and roof gardens and roof forests they not widely spread in our area but trees can be grown on roofs and by growing trees, bushes and grass, you know plants on roof, you actually will make significant contribution to increase in the canopy area. But, yes, we need to measure the percentage of area which is covered with a dense canopy. So, it's two, I would say, factors… one is the area of canopy, and another is the density of canopy. I think that the project should be really long-term project. So, this is just the start and so we will apply for other opportunities while we are developing the climate adaptation center, so most likely it will grow within I cannot give you an exact time horizon, but it will grow within definitely next several years. In terms of funding and in terms of enrollment of UAlbany faculty and students, it will grow.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Agreed, that this is going to be a multi-generational effort that goes long into the future. Really, because all the tree planting that we do today doesn't mean anything if we are not subsequently bringing up the next generation of young people to value and appreciate these trees, because ultimately, they're going to be the ones that need to take care of them and are going to be making the choices about whether to keep them or to cut them down to make room for something else. So, this is something that's got to be handed off into the future. So, the education component that runs concurrently with the actual planting of it is an essential piece.
MARY HUNT:
So, is there an education component for the general community as well, as opposed to just those who are participating or that you want to draw on to the project? Do you expect there'll be some sort of a campaign to let people know this is going on and how they can take measures in their own life?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yes, we actually promised the U.S. Forest Service that we will run such a campaign, explaining what we what we are doing and why we're doing that and explaining this not only to our students, but to communities as well.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Agreed. Right. I think there's a lot of myths and misinformation about trees that are out there, ideas that they interfere with plumbing or that they provide cover for criminal activity, that need to get discussed and talk to people about and really, we need to center our messaging about trees, around their benefits, for shading, for cooling, for water filtration, for food production, really, through a climate justice, lens and perspective.
MARY HUNT:
Should I assume you both have green thumbs?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
I like to think of myself as having one. Yeah.
[All three laugh.]
MARY HUNT:
Andrei?
ANDREI LAPENAS:
"Ah, yeah, I grow stuff in my backyard.
MARY HUNT:
What do you like to grow? I grow tomatoes. I grow parsley, I grow mostly… well, the truth is mostly flowers, of course, but I planted some trees, which didn't do well in our climate, but I'm still trying to do that. By the way, the great place to observe biodiversity in this region will be Albany Rural Cemetery. Yes, you can find a lot of trees there… different trees.
MARY HUNT:
What do you grow, Scott?
SCOTT KELLOGG:
A lot of trees. Yeah, this time of year I’m very busy collecting seed from a lot of trees that are all dropping their nuts and their fruits right now, storing that over the winter and planting it out in the spring. In addition to that, a number of vegetables, mushrooms, chickens, fish, all kinds of things.
MARY HUNT:
So, you don’t just talk the talk. You walk the walk -- both of you, which is great.
[All three laugh.]
MARY HUNT:
We call the program the engagement ring and I always ask guests for what I call a gem -- a piece of advice, information or resource they could point people to that they think would be of value. But I guess I would ask you to put your gem in the context of what the average person can do to help expand the urban forest.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Well, I did mention that the city of Albany does have a tree planting program which is great where a citizen can sponsor the purchase of a tree and have it planted in front of their homes and be responsible for keeping it watered, and that's a great program, right. Or if they have the means, they could even just purchase a tree themselves and plant it when… I'm really struck by a number of neighborhoods or even just going through around Albany in these past couple of weeks, neighborhoods that are, you know, fairly average income, where there is a real lack of tree cover even for those neighborhoods as well. Folks can do a lot to improve their own quality of life and for others enhancing local biodiversity, which is another aspect of this that we didn't talk about. So, I think people planting a tree on their own property if they have properties, is one of the most important things that they could do.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Yeah, I live in, not in Albany. I live in Guilderland. And we can see often, you know, new developments and the way these new developments developed, first they cut all the trees, then they put the boxes -- I mean the houses -- next to each other. And then later on residents have to plant new trees to basically restore the canopy you know to the extent to which they think they can do in these neighborhoods. But the question about what you can do is very often asked by my students, so they ask me about that? And my answer is actually that look, it doesn't really matter what you do in your life. You might become environmental scientist, whether you will be a mathematician, or a schoolteacher doesn't really matter. Try to use your influence, which you have in your life, in order to, you know, in order to make the environment secure, for you, for your family, for the nation, for everybody who lives here. So, this influence, which you have in life, sometimes it's more important than your ability to do some kind of, you know, simple manual labor. But although that's highly encouraged, and if you can do recycling, which is, by the way, started on this campus, if I'm not wrong, like in 2006, when President Hall created the Environmental Sustainability Committee, and, but still now we do not recycle everything we can, honestly. We can increase the recycling component. We can do this on campus. Students can do this in their dorms and in their houses. And, again, you don’t necessarily need to be environmental scientists who spend a lot of time out, you know, outside to make the difference. You can do this through things which you are good at in your life and make the change.
[Music fades in.]
MARY HUNT:
Good reminder, we all can do something. Great advice! Thank you both gentlemen.
SCOTT KELLOGG:
Thank you.
ANDREI LAPENAS:
Thank you, Mary.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Professor Andrei Lapenas is the program director of the Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy MS in the Department of Geography and Planning at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Albany. He serves as principal investigator for the Urban CAFÉ DAY project. Dr. Scott Kellogg is the educational director for the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, New York. Visit the Radix Center online at Radix Center dot O R G. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at U Albany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
[Theme music fades out.]