Planting Healthy Air

• 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.
  
• 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.
• There are 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.
  

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. 
  

Additional 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. 
• Students should be familiar with terms such as transpiration, return on investment, and mitigation. 

Differentiation

• Science, social studies, and geography classes could have students work in pairs or small groups to read one of the fifteen full reports on specific cities, which are linked in the the story map. 
• Environmental clubs or service clubs could 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?