Thanks to a number of local partners — including Clark County Public Health and the Forest Service — you can check out a Nature Explore backpack from the Vancouver Community Library for up to two months at a time. Packs include local trail guides, tree identification information and a variety of tools kids will dig: binoculars, magnifying glass, whistle, journals for record-keeping and more. You just have to commit to forming a “club” — which can be your family — and going exploring at least once per month. The backpacks are available on the third floor of the library in the children’s section; or, pick one up at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest office at 10600 N.E. 51st Circle, Vancouver.
Trees are superheroes.
They save lives, strengthen communities and prevent crime every day. They discourage violence and promote reasonable problem-solving. They clean and freshen the very air we breathe and the water we drink. They even put money in our pockets (or raise our rent and property taxes, if we insist that our glass is half empty).
“Urban trees can help solve community problems,” said Charles Ray, Vancouver’s urban forester.
But the benefits of trees go even deeper than that, Ray said: Trees are good for our bodies, our brains, our psyches.
“The presence of trees is an important health issue,” said Alan Melnick, Clark County’s public health director. “The closer you are to trees and parks, the less chronic disease you’re likely to have, and you’re less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.”
Thanks to a number of local partners — including Clark County Public Health and the Forest Service — you can check out a Nature Explore backpack from the Vancouver Community Library for up to two months at a time. Packs include local trail guides, tree identification information and a variety of tools kids will dig: binoculars, magnifying glass, whistle, journals for record-keeping and more. You just have to commit to forming a "club" — which can be your family — and going exploring at least once per month. The backpacks are available on the third floor of the library in the children's section; or, pick one up at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest office at 10600 N.E. 51st Circle, Vancouver.
In recent years, scientists have begun to prove what human beings have sensed for as long as human beings have been around: Trees are our friends and even our caretakers. City dwellers, surrounded by concrete and asphalt and all of the stress they facilitate, probably have an especially acute need for trees’ health-boosting and community-building benefits. That’s why the city of Vancouver works diligently with Friends of Trees, a Portland nonprofit agency, to plant street and yard trees all over town.
“There’s just something in us that’s connected to trees,” Ray said.
A leafy environment cuts down on chronic mental fatigue. People feel better, neighborhoods are safer, kids do better in school.
“The simple, fundamental fact is that trees provide essential benefits that we cannot live without,” he said.
Here’s a list of 10 ways that trees are good for you, your community and the planet.
You
1. Heart and lungs: A leading scientist in this field is Portland’s own Geoffrey Donovan, research forester with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.
One Donovan study in particular took advantage of a major change to the natural environment to track effects on human health. At least 100 million ash trees have been killed in recent decades by an invasive pest, the emerald ash borer, a beetle found mostly in Michigan and the upper Midwest. (There’s no end in sight; there are an estimated 7.5 billion ash trees in the U.S.) The situation presented “a unique natural experiment” in public health, Donovan and his colleagues wrote. They tracked county-level death rates due to common causes — chronic lower-respiratory tract and cardiovascular diseases — and correlated those with the spread of the pest and the deaths of trees.
The finding, published in 2013: The accelerated death of ash trees resulted in a notable acceleration in human deaths. In one five-year period, there were 6,113 “excess” deaths due to respiratory causes and 15,080 “excess” deaths due to cardiovascular causes.
An even more ambitious study, published in 2014 by David Nowack, a Pennsylvania-based Forest Service researcher, aimed to quantify the total amount of air pollution absorbed by trees in the U.S., and the total affect on human health. The finding: trees removed 17.4 million metric tons of air pollution in 2010, a total air quality improvement of less than 1 percent; the total savings in terms of human health effects was 850 fewer deaths and 670,000 fewer incidences of acute respiratory symptoms — valued at $6.8 billion overall.
2. Healthy births: Donovan also crunched the numbers for all “singleton” live births to single-family home dwellers in Portland in 2006 and 2007. Controlling for the socioeconomic status of the mother and the neighborhood, he found that tree canopy cover within 50 meters of the home was associated with lower risk of low birth-weight babies. Research in Spain arrived at a similar conclusion.
3. Good moods: People who live around trees pop fewer happy pills, according to a study focusing on London. Researchers with the University of Exeter correlated the number of street trees in each London borough with antidepressant pharmaceuticals dispensed by the National Health Service (used by 90 percent of Londoners). The finding was that one additional tree per kilometer was associated with 1.18 fewer antidepressant prescriptions per thousand people.
A similarly comprehensive study focusing on Toronto, led by a University of Chicago psychologist, compared both perceived — and objective — healthiness with tree cover. Controlled for other demographic factors, such as wealth and age, the findings were dramatic: More trees per city block meant a definite drop in health problems, perceptions of health problems and overall sense of age.
4. Faster healing: In what’s considered a pioneering inquiry, one scientist found that post-operative gall bladder surgery patients healed faster, felt better and needed less pain medication if their recovery room offered a window view of a natural scene. They were compared to those who had a view of a brick wall. A related study found that indoor plants in hospital rooms provided similarly positive outcomes: lower blood pressure and less pain, anxiety and fatigue. Both studies found happier patients who made hospital staff happier with them.
5. Stress busters: In Holland, researchers found that people living in “greener” areas reported feeling better overall and were less likely to be diagnosed with numerous health problems, especially anxiety and depression. In Japan, it was demonstrated that walking in a forest resulted in lower heart rates and lower cortisol, the so-called stress hormone that’s linked to a variety of health problems including higher blood pressure and increased abdominal fat, lower immunity and impaired cognitive function.
Your community
6. Crime fighters: Portland was again the test subject for a Donovan study, this one of crime around 2,813 single-family homes in one Southeast neighborhood. Three years of crime data in seven categories were correlated with street tree surveys, aerial photography and even tours with neighborhood police officers. The finding: More street trees and larger yard trees were both associated with decreased crime.
Urban planners and park designers are getting over the idea that big trees equal hiding places for criminals, Ray said.
“A neighborhood with trees is a neighborhood where people are more likely to be hanging out outdoors,” Ray said. “That’s a safer and more-connected neighborhood. It gives the impression that the neighborhood must be a great place to be.”
That sort of social cohesion goes a long way toward convincing criminals of a caring, watchful community, and sending them looking for better opportunities elsewhere.
7. Domestic peacemakers: Scientists surveyed households in Chicago public housing buildings that were all virtually identical, except for the greenery surrounding some of them. Some residents had views of grass and trees out their windows; other residents only faced the asphalt jungle. The scientists collected data about family dynamics and interpersonal conflict. They found that the residents surrounded by trees and greenery “use more constructive, less violent methods to deal with conflict.” Those residents reported using reason more and violence less when in conflict with their children and partners.
8. Wealth generators: According to the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers, a mature yard tree can be valued at anywhere up to $10,000. According to the Center for Urban Forest Research, planting a tree on the west side of your home will result in energy savings of as much as 12 percent in 15 years. The Forest Service reports that properly placed trees beside buildings can reduce air conditioning needs by 30 percent and save 20 to 50 percent in energy used for heating. And, one survey found realtors nearly unanimous in saying that mature trees have a moderate or strong impact on home salability.
Our world
9. Water managers: Trees are the best possible stormwater sponges. The more developed your neighborhood, the more you might deal with flooding, but trees intercept rainfall at the canopy level, and suck it up at ground level and below. They also purify the water, storing pollutants including motor oil and farm chemicals. The task of urban stormwater management is far easier and less expensive when you’ve got big trees doing the work for free.
10. Cooling towers: In this reporter’s favorite experiment, folks from the Master Gardener program of the Washington State University Clark County Extension fanned out across Esther Short Park in downtown Vancouver with laser thermometers in a summer 2014 heat wave to demonstrate how blisteringly hot cities — aka “heat islands” — can get, and how sweetly cool it remains under the tree canopy.
Their findings surprised even them, they said: Exposed pavement in the sun was measured as high as 113 degrees, while the shade beneath the park’s biggest trees went as low as a comfy 68. That’s the difference between a mellow summer day and a heat emergency — and the only difference was trees.
According to the Forest Service, the net cooling effect of one healthy tree is the same as 10 room-size air conditioners blowing for 20 hours a day.
Bonus fact
11. Vital friends: They’re beautiful, they’re pleasing, they’re highly huggable while never getting fresh or gropey. They seem to speak to something inside of us, as Ray pointed out.
According to research conducted by psychology professor Richard Ryan and a team at the University of Rochester, test subjects who spent no more than 20 minutes a day outside in nature consistently felt more energetic and “vital” than those who did not. To control for the vital feeling that comes from any physical activity, the research team had other subjects walk down a corridor, view photographs of natural and non-natural scenes, and even simply imagine themselves in nature or not.
“Two thirds of adults in Clark County are overweight or obese,” said Melnick. “The bottom line is that we need to increase access to physical activity. We need to do all we can to promote access to parks and trees.”
