A Plan to Integrate Management of Urban Trees into Air Quality Planning

"The goal of this project was to develop a plan to evaluate the feasibility of including management of urban vegetation in the air quality planning process. The study will address the potential of this approach from a technical, regulatory and programmatic perspective, with New York as an example. Further, this study could serve as technical reference and guidance for developing future documents or discussions, both at the state and federal level.

"The study considered the ozone non-attainment area of the New York City metropolitan area, that includes portions of northeastern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut (see Figure 2), to investigate the following four tasks: Determining the potential for increasing tree canopy cover in the study area, i.e., quantifying existing tree canopy cover, open space for planting trees, and reasonably achievable tree canopy cover increases.

Computer modeling of the air quality and other associated beneficial impacts due to increasing tree canopy cover and the resulting improvement in air quality Evaluating the likelihood that the increase in tree canopy cover is a viable strategy to improve air quality within the framework of the current regulatory environment.

Outlining potential strategies to achieve the projected increases in tree cover with associated improvement in air quality, and making recommendations to guide future work"

[from report Overview]

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