How Cool Are Your Trees? Heat and Vegetation in Cities

Every year people die because of extreme heat. Trees help combat the lethality of an increasingly warm planet, where cities are even warmer. Vegetation provides shade and evapotranspirative cooling, which lower temperatures and may save lives.

This talk draws from a review of more than 115 research papers from across the globe on urban vegetation and heat from 2018 to 2024. The When, Where, and How of urban cooling will be discussed, with attention to current knowledge and knowledge gaps.

We will also zoom into New Haven, CT to examine how bike mounted temperature sensors better reflect lived experience and demonstrate local level cooling from tree canopy cover with and without cloud cover. Ongoing bike based heat research in Baltimore will also be shared.

The goal is to describe the state of the field and provide a specific place based example of how trees provide cooling at the human scale.