Lund University in Sweden - new paper on using trees to help against air pollution in cities
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/8899576?utm_campaign=unspecified&utm_content=unspecified&utm_medium=email&utm_source=apsis-anp-3
Many of our cities have problems with air pollution and it have been shown to cause a lot of damage to human health. There are different kinds of air pollution, some are gaseous air pollutions like NOx or ground-level ozone and other air pollutions are particles. NOx forms in high temperatures from combustion processes like in a car motor. Ground-level ozone form in combination with NOx, hydrocarbon and sunlight. Particles are particularly damaging to us. Most of the particles comes from the road because of the damage of the roads by studded tires.
Different trees have different kind of strategies. Some are competitors which grow fast and have high productivity. Others are stress tolerators which generally have slow growth rate and long-lived leaves. But most trees are a combination of these two, that is; stress tolerant competitors.
The aim with this study was to investigate which trees that can manage the urban environment at the same time as they are good at cleaning the air. Which characteristics in these trees make them fit for cleaning the air?
In my methods, I made a literature study and a case study. In the case study, I used Malmö city 10 most common trees. These were all deciduous trees.
This study show that different kind of trees are good at cleaning different kind of pollutions. Deciduous trees are best at cleaning gaseous pollutions like CO2 and NO2 whereas conifers are best at cleaning particles.
So, it ́s good to have trees in the cities as they clean the air and make the cities less warm in the hot summers and have a good mix between conifers and deciduous trees. If the municipals can take trees into consideration when they plan they have a lot to win.
