There’s a tree movement happening worldwide and it’s changing the world

The ultimate goal throughout cities worldwide is to plant more trees as a way to fight climate change. Milan Italy has a plan of planting 3 million trees over the next 12 years. Planting these trees will also clean the city’s polluted air to improve health. Manchester UK will be planting a tree for every resident, Melbourne will double its canopy cover by 2040 and NYC is planting 1 million trees. Pakistan just met their goal of planting a billion trees and has a goal to plant 100 million. A new forest with 50 million trees is currently being planted in the UK. Trees are the focus right now, for many reasons.

Not only are cities interested in planting more trees, but they also want to check on how many trees are alive and what their conditions like.  It took a team of arborists a year to map every street tree in San Francisco. There were 124,795 trees to be exact. In New York, it took almost 2 years for volunteers to count every tree. Now there is a new algorithm using AI and satellite data to map how many trees in a city in just hours. Caltech undergrad Aidan Swope created the algorithm while interning at Descartes Labs. Despite cutting down the census process, the tool is unable to identify the species of each tree. Yet the tool gives you a different perspective, a 30,000 foot view to be exact, which helps you see the condition of every tree. Although the algorithm is not yet available commercially, the company would love to work directly with other cities.

The tree movement is real! There’s even a group of scientists who found a way to clone trees. They used the DNA from ancient redwoods and planted 75 trees at Presidio Park, near SF’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Did you know that living near more trees improves health and makes you happier? Besides that, there are many environmental benefits as well.

Sources:

Futurism

FastCo