Houston already experiences hot summers, and climate change is predicted to bring even hotter and longer summers. Protecting and increasing the regional tree canopy, particularly in neighborhoods identified as 'heat islands' will be a crucial strategy for maintaining a livable city. In 2020, as part of the City's Climate Action Plan, a goal was set to plant 4.6 million new trees by 2030. But the Houston region continues to lose tree cover due to new development, highway expansions, drought, storm damage, etc. New research and an analysis by the Kinder Institute at Rice University assesses the patterns of Houston's changing tree canopy over time, and the important role that the tree canopy plays in mitigating heat. The Houston Chronicle also ran an important related editorial on April 22, 2024, which outlines the challenges and changes needed to maintain and increase the canopy. The majority of that editorial is copied below.
Kinder Institute for Urban Research article:
Harris County is losing trees. Too many. /Editorial
From the Houston Chronical Editorial 4/22/2024
Between 2011 and 2021, Harris County lost roughly 10% of its tree coverage, according to a new analysis from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
Using a U.S. Forest Service land cover database generated from satellite imagery, the research institute was able to create a tree canopy data set for Harris County and track the loss, year by year and neighborhood by neighborhood. Some of the biggest losses were in neighborhoods experiencing rapid development. The East End lost nearly half of its tree coverage. Montrose and Midtown were also high on the list. Suburban areas also stood out: Aldine and Atascosita were among the top 10 community areas for tree canopy loss. Many will remember the 2011 drought and its wilting weather, but it turns out that the loss the analysts observed was more or less steady across each year.
This wasn't exactly news to Barry Ward, executive director of Trees for Houston. His organization plants around 70,000 trees a year in the area and has contributed some 700,000 trees since 1983.
Houston set a goal in 2020 to add 4.6 million new trees by 2030. By 2022, the city said it had planted some 1.4 million of those. Several big, recent grants have targeted the problem in places like Gulfton, one of the county's densest neighborhoods by housing units but sparsest by tree coverage. All the tree planting, including by the city parks department and up to 100,000 per year by the Texas Department of Transportation along highways, "is a drop in the bucket compared to what we lose both from development and natural loss," Ward said.
"It has to be concurrent with design standards that require more space for greenery and trees, as well as preservation efforts for what greenbelt we have left." That means we'll need a combination of more stringent requirements that require street rebuilds, for example, to include enough space for trees when feasible and we'll need to get serious about maintaining those trees once planted.
Local governments take different approaches but in Houston, there are fees for developers who don't replant the required amount of trees in their projects and small incentives to try to encourage them to keep existing canopy. Some developers are more conscientious than others. Too often, Ward said, even if a developer does plant, say, the 30-or-so required trees in a new big box store parking lot, they have faint interest in actually keeping those trees alive. That's maintenance cost.
"They help nearly everything," Ward said. "Clean air, clean water, cooler temperatures, lower energy costs, quality of life and aesthetic issues."
Many politicians, at least, seem to get it. And blockbuster projects like the $43 million coming to Gulf-town thanks, in part, to U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher's advocacy, should help re-imagine a neighborhood that is regularly 17 degrees hotter than other parts of the city.
But one-off projects aren't enough. "At some point we have to acknowledge that virtually every single street design they've done in the last 20 years with only a single-digit number of exceptions does not reasonably account for tree planting," said Ward.
It's possible to go too far with tree regulations that dictate what homeowners can do on their own land. Gov. Greg Abbott famously targeted Austin's tree policies, calling them "socialistic" after he was asked to replant trees after a protected pecan tree on his property died.
We don't want that. And we know revisiting design codes is no walk in the park. But then again, these days, neither is a walk in Houston.
Questions or comments about this topic, contact Frank Blake at frankblake@juno.com