Planting Healthy Air
Articles/Websites
Grades6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12Biology, Geography, Health
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by The Nature Conservancy
What it is
- This interactive resource includes a number of maps, images, linked reports, and text that present findings from the Nature Conservancy about the return on investment of planting urban trees to reduce summer temperatures and filter pollution from the air, including reports specific to New York City, Atlanta, Beijing, Denver, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, and Shanghai.
- A variety of maps show which neighborhoods around the world can benefit most from tree planting to remove particulate matter from the air and/or improve air quality for the residents.
Teaching tips
Positives
- The interactive world maps are engaging and easy to manipulate.
- The scroll-down design of the story makes it easy for students to move through the information at their own pace.
Prerequisites
- The map indicating the projected temperatures for 2040 shows the temperatures in Celsius, so students will need to know how to convert the values to Fahrenheit.
- The links to the individual reports in the Cooling the Air section are broken.
- Students should be familiar with terms such as transpiration, return on investment, and mitigation.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Science, social studies, and geography classes can have students select cities to focus on in the interactive maps.
- Environmental clubs or service clubs can use the map tools to identify nearby neighborhoods that would benefit from tree planting and work with officials to organize a tree planting event.
- Other resources on this topic include Plant Trees, The Tree Cover and Temperature Disparity in US Urbanized Areas, Benefits of Urban Trees, and What Happens If We Cut Down All of a City's Trees?
From the scientist review
This resource accounts for the potential that nature has for cleaning the air and regulating air temperatures. It examines tree planting as a cost-effective solution for mitigating the impacts of pollution around neighborhoods. This is recommended for teaching.
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