More than Paper® Raising awareness on the benefits of trees

CANOPIES COOL

Sum­mers are HOT and in Louisiana, it can feel like we’re walk­ing on the sur­face of the sun — with 100% humid­i­ty! Build­ing and man­ag­ing healthy Urban Canopies is one of the best tools for you and your com­mu­ni­ty to beat the heat this summer.

We and our Gulf Coast neigh­bors are known for our hur­ri­canes, but ​“Extreme Heat is now the dead­liest weath­er-relat­ed dis­as­ter in the U.S., killing more Amer­i­cans each year than hur­ri­canes, floods, and wild­fires combined…In cities as geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse as Phoenix, Mia­mi, and New York, the num­ber of days top­ping 100°F has dou­bled or even tripled over the past 30 years.” (Arbor Day Foun­da­tion) Increas­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures com­bined with reduced veg­e­ta­tion and heat-trap­ping sur­faces like con­crete and asphalt ele­vates dis­com­fort to dan­ger­ous con­di­tions for our communities.

How­ev­er, by plant­i­ng trees and main­tain­ing mature canopy trees, we can pro­vide one of the best and most cost-effec­tive pub­lic safe­ty nets. Tree-lined streets and neigh­bor­hoods can be up to 25 degrees Fahren­heit cool­er while the streets them­selves can see a heat reduc­tion of over 45 degrees! These cool­ing effects can save not just our infra­struc­ture (roads, roofs, HVAC sys­tems, etc) but our lives as well! Watch the ​“Canopies Cool” PSAs to find out how trees are much More Than Paper.

Trees are STORMWATER SPONGES

Did you know that ONE large oak tree can pre­vent the runoff of 1,000 gal­lons of stormwa­ter each year?

When we think of Stormwa­ter Man­age­ment and Stormwa­ter Infra­struc­ture, too often we think only about ditch­es and drains instead of green­spaces and TREES! Through the process­es of Inter­cep­tion, Infil­tra­tion, and Evapo-tran­spi­ra­tion, trees act not just as green infra­struc­ture but essen­tial infrastructure.

Water absorp­tion under the canopy of a mature tree, for instance, can increase by as much as 800% rel­a­tive to a typ­i­cal lawn or bare soil! Addi­tion­al­ly, vibrant tree canopies can reduce stormwa­ter runoff by more than 10%, with an indi­vid­ual mature tree inter­cept­ing near­ly 20,000 gal­lons of stormwa­ter annually.

Healthy, mature trees mat­ter most! So, the next time you see trees in your neigh­bor­hood or on a dri­ve, remem­ber that they are much More Than Paper.