Extreme Urban Heat: Issues, Questions, Answers

Aaron Schmidt, Greenburgh Department of Community Development and Conservation

Also in attendance was Aaron Schmidt, Deputy Commissioner, Town of Greenburgh Department of Community Development and Conservation.

Jeff Kehoe, New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets

Jeff Kehoe, Farmland Protection Specialist, New York State Dept. of Agriculture and Markets, traveled from Albany to attend the symposium.

Russell Clark, PlanIt Geo

The attendee who came the longest distance was Russell Clark, Urban Forestry Account Executive with PlanIt Geo in Colorado.

The meeting kicked off with a discussion of current grant programs, including The Federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) through the USDA Forest Service, New York State’s Urban and Community Forestry Grants  and other grants available to disadvantaged communities. The Arbor Day Foundation offers an ongoing opportunity, the T.R.E.E. Proposal for Tree Restoration and Engagement Events, and also plans to launch a new grant program in mid to late fall 2023. Discussion focused on how municipalities might acquire grant dollars to hire arborists or urban foresters.

Next on the agenda came a presentation on leveraging NASA earth observations to model urban cooling Interventions and urban heat vulnerability in Yonkers. Julianne Liu and Tamara Barbkova, both on the Project Team of NASA DEVELOP, described the results of a project conducted in conjunction with Groundwork Hudson Valley that mapped urban heat islands and heat exposures within the city. “When you think of NASA, you think of space,” said Barbkova, “but we also have satellites that collect scientific knowledge.” The project focused on the utility of tree canopy, offering simulations that included a projection of an intervention in a specific neighborhood that showed an increase in “thermal comfort” after a planting of Eastern redbuds. The conclusion? The “strategic placement of trees can have an impact on cooling.”

Remarks followed by Luis Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Climate Applications at George Mason University’s Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences Department. Dr. Ortiz’s topic was “Extreme Heat, Heat Islands and Cities: Physical Drivers and Impacts.” He spoke about what makes cities different. The “urban surface energy balance” changes when impervious surfaces absorb solar radiation and air conditioning puts out heat. Surfaces radiate heat at night. The result: “Most heat-related mortality takes place in homes and especially those without air conditioning.” In other words, the most vulnerable are the poorest neighborhoods.

George Profous, Senior Forester, Division of Lands and Forests, New York State DEC followed with some concrete suggestions for how municipalities can lessen the impact of extreme heat by planting trees.

He spoke about the impact of street design, including building height, east-west orientation, tree spacing, tree height, shade and prevailing winds. He covered the need for demonstration projects concentrating on streets and local communities as a way to show the results of including trees in city planning. “People need to see the positive changes,” he emphasized, “in order to support them.”

Participants enjoyed a luncheon generously provided by the City of Yonkers. William Serratore of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability Development described the City’s new Climate Action Plan. The twenty-five-year project will include ninety-two electric vehicle charging stations city-wide, two electric sanitation trucks and the possible electrification of the school bus fleet. The goal is to decrease greenhouse emissions 60 percent by 2038.

Participants had an opportunity for networking during bus transportation to the start of the field trip at Smith O’Hara Levine Park.

Tour Participants at Community Garden

There, a playground that opened in 2019 was designed through a brainstorming process with a local middle school. Nearby, the tour viewed a new community garden with twenty-one thriving vegetable beds. After a few days of poor air quality, the weather cooperated with cool temperatures for walking.

Community climate activist Renee Milligan, who first initiated a new Greenway project, spoke about “how everything manifested to what it is today.” She told the tour about noticing the run-down area at the start of the trail. “God gave me a vision,” she said. “All I saw was green. Green shows life and that’s what we need more of in a neighborhood like this.” She told the group, “I hope this is the start of more communities getting involved.”

Mario Caruso, Grants Manager with the Yonkers Department of Planning and Development, introduced the City’s innovative initiatives for addressing heat issues and working with local communities to provide this green corridor linking the community to adjacent Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. He said that a multimillion-dollar funding package would transform a 3.1-mile path along what used to be the Putnam Railroad rail bed, the property of the City of Yonkers since the 1960s but never before utilized as a park. Between 1962 and the 1980s the site deteriorated.

“We do have urban problems, still,” Caruso acknowledged, such as “people dumping mattresses on the site,” but now “people can walk, bike or push strollers” along the wooded trail from Smith O’Hara Levine through to Caryl Avenue and from there to the 11,046-acre Van Cortlandt Park.

The improved trail is part of an overall initiative that includes new downtown bike lanes and “ripping out sidewalks that haven’t been replaced since 1975” in order to plant trees, with a foundation of structural soil. “Story poles” placed along the greenway route were commissioned from a local artist and tell its tale.

Story Pole, Yonkers Greenway

The tour ended with a stroll beyond a chain link fence along the forested trails of Van Cortlandt Park—a portal between Yonkers and New York City that the City of Yonkers and Groundwork Hudson Valley are working to make more accessible for neighborhood residents.

Van Cortlandt Park, New York City

ReLeaf Region 3 Cochair George Profous offered his assessment of the event as participants started home: “It seems clear that municipal arboriculture and greenspace infrastructure will increasingly become a part of our urban areas, if those present today are any indication.”