Planning a Sustainable Tree Canopy for Durham
Date
2020-04-24
Advisors
Cagle, Nicolette
Swenson, Jennifer
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Abstract
Trees are a vital part of a city’s infrastructure. The urban forest provides many
ecosystem services to residents including health benefits, air pollution removal,
extreme heat reduction, stormwater mitigation, and even lower violent crime rates.
Durham, North Carolina is 52% covered by trees, but its canopy is declining from urban
development, and it is unevenly distributed due to a history of racial and socioeconomic
inequity. Parts of the city that are more urbanized, non-white, and poor tend to have
far less tree cover than more rural, white, affluent areas. This Masters Project sought
to help TreesDurham and the City of Durham plan a sustainable tree canopy that meets
the city’s goal of 55% cover by 2040. Expansion of Durham’s urban forest must address
the concerns of the community, maximize ecosystem services, and consider possible
changes to city development codes. We addressed these needs by (1) conducting a community
survey to understand Durham residents’ attitudes towards city trees, (2) creating
a tree-planting prioritization map based on ecosystem services, and (3) modeling the
future of Durham’s urban forest under multiple development scenarios. We recommend
that TreesDurham and the City of Durham (1) incorporate input from Durham residents,
(2) target tree-planting to the areas that need tree ecosystem services the most,
including heavily urbanized areas and roadside rights-of-way, and (3) greatly increase
tree protection requirements in Durham’s development code. This will ensure that all
residents of Durham enjoy access to the benefits of the urban forest.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20539Citation
Hancock, Grace; Vanko, Alex; & Xiong, Mingfei (2020). Planning a Sustainable Tree Canopy for Durham. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20539.Collections
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