Responding to Richmond’s Urban Heat Island

Richmond, Virginia, is like many cities across the United States: a highly populated city with an aging tree canopy that has encountered increased urban heat island effect in recent years. Satellites can provide city-scale urban heat data but lack the ability for close block-by-block investigation of temperature variation to understand which communities are most vulnerable to the extreme heat.

VA Department of Forestry

Under the leadership of Dr. Jeremy Hoffman of the Science Museum of Virginia, “citizen scientists” gathered to help measure temperatures during a 2017 heatwave in order to design community-scale adaptation plans. Through this process, they compared land use with local air temperatures to identify the warmest communities in the city. These were areas with more impermeable surface area and less tree canopy. The results of this work also uncovered that the warmest communities consist mostly of low-income families, are vulnerable to heatwaves and are most likely to call for heat-related emergency help.  An August 2020 article in the New York Times titled “How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering” describes the 1930s practice  of “redlining” (marking neighborhoods as risky investments because residents were Black) and how residents seek greenspace to feel calmer and breathe better. The citizen science work is part of the growing evidence that cities with “neighborhoods that are poorer and have more residents of color can be 5 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in summer than wealthier, whiter parts of the same city.”

Since the landmark work was completed in 2017, Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) staff have been using the findings to inform and prioritize planting projects funded with state and federal funds in the City. Tree planting projects have been completed in some of the high-vulnerability areas of Richmond, which include Bellemeade, Downtown, and Carver neighborhoods, through VDOF’s Virginia Trees for Clean Water Program. The Bellemeade planting project was led by the James River Association; the Downtown project was led by Capital Trees; and Carver was led by Virginia Commonwealth University’ (VCU) Office of Sustainability.

The Carver project provides a unique pilot that VDOF is continuing to promote around the state. VCU staff worked with students to complete a tree inventory of the Carver neighborhood, including identifying empty tree wells, and conducted an i-Tree Eco analysis. With this information, the team wanted to increase the tree canopy cover in Carver. In November 2018, VCU coordinated over 120 volunteers to plant 62 trees in the Carver neighborhood.

VA Department of Forestry

VDOF staff supported the project by advising on tree species selection and providing support for the tree planting days. Richmond Tree Stewards led a tree planting demonstration for volunteers and they planted 20 different species of trees, the majority of which are native to Virginia.

The VDOF Urban & Community Forestry grant program is currently supporting a new analysis being conducted by Old Dominion University for the City of Norfolk using 2019 US Forest Service grant dollars and will work with the city and local partners to plant trees in strategic locations across Norfolk once complete.

Using science and working with local community nonprofits and partners are both key to building resilience to urban heating and addressing equity issues. Strategic tree planting projects that are well maintained are a low cost and high impact solution to urban heat island effect, and they engage the community. The VDOF and their partners have achieved an outstanding accomplishment with the “Responding to Richmond’s Urban Heat Island” project, a model project for all urban areas in Virginia and across the Southern Region.

For more information, visit the following links:

https://www.cbf.org/news-media/newsroom/2020/virginia/in-richmond-trees-will-battle-extreme-heat-pollution-injustice.html

https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-we-turn-down-the-temperature-on-urban-heat-islands

https://www.fs.fed.us/research/urban-webinars/rising-temp-hotter-neighborhoods.php

https://enrichmond.org/treelab/why-trees/