Urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas due to substantial differences in land-cover, especially impervious surfaces. During times of peak annual temperature, heat waves result in large amounts of energy being expended for home cooling which has implications for greenhouse gas emissions and increased utilities bills for citizens. Due to the cooling properties of vegetation, the presence of an urban tree canopy can regulate and counteract these elevated land surface temperatures, thus reducing energy usage especially during summer peak energy load periods. The Greening the Gateway Cities Program, created by the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in 2014 and managed by the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), is designed to reduce household heating and cooling energy use by increasing tree canopy cover in urban residential areas and has a goal of increasing canopy cover by 5%\u201310% in select neighborhoods featuring lower tree canopy, older housing stock, higher wind speeds, and a larger renter population. Using student fellows of the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program, this project will conduct a tree health mortality assessment of trees planted in 2014 in three Gateway Cities: Chelsea, Revere, and Holyoke. Results will inform current and future DCR tree planting operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas due to substantial differences in land-cover, especially impervious surfaces. During times of peak annual temperature, heat waves result in large amounts of energy being expended for home cooling which has implications for greenhouse gas emissions and increased utilities bills for citizens. Due to the cooling properties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[21],"principal-investigator":[389,341],"funding-agency":[390],"class_list":["post-1759","research-projects","type-research-projects","status-publish","hentry","tag-past","principal-investigator-deborah-martin","principal-investigator-john-rogan","funding-agency-commonwealth-of-massachusetts-university-of-massachusetts-amherst"],"yoast_head":"\n