100KTREEs

Introduction

Do you know that Europe-under the Green Deal- has committed herself to pledge to plant at least 3 billion additional trees in the EU by 2030? With about 75% of the European population living in urban areas, cities are going to be key in delivering the deal’s objectives while ensuring that it also leads to an improvement of the quality of life. The overall goal of 100KTREEs is to make cities a better place to live by encouraging tree planting, based on a decision toolbox with Copernicus mapping and modelling tools.  Hereto the project will also look into monetary valuation of the impacts of planting trees resulting in improved air quality, heat stress, human wellbeing, and biodiversity. By delivering evidence-based business cases for tree planting in our cities, 100KTREEs will also introduce collaboration-based financing mechanisms to support cities in turning green. 100KTREEs consortium consists of 12 partners (1 university, 8 SMEs and 3 non-profit organisation) from 6 European countries and the UK. It gathers a skilled, interdisciplinary and intersectoral consortium with complimentary expertise (i.e., research gathering, building the modelling, be involved in citizen engagement, identify city requirements, collect satellite data information layers, develop business cases and organise the financial setup for producing a viable outcome for end-users).

Aim

Most of us live in cities, even though cities are not the healthiest places due to poor air quality, noisy surroundings and lack of recreational spaces. Many cities have few green areas and consist of too much ‘concrete jungle’ which makes for a harsh environment for all living things.  With the changing climate, the weather is expected to become more extreme. One such effect will be urban heat islands, which will be even more profound, with heatwaves expected to increase 3 to 10-fold by 2080 depending on the climate scenario. A way of tackling all these issues, is to plant more trees within the urban fabric - a well-recognised, and relatively cheap and efficient measure for cities to adapt to future climatic challenges.

Methodology

In view of this, the ambition of 100KTREEs is to make cities a better and healthier place to live by encouraging municipalities to plant more trees and to optimise the impact of tree planting. The team will support cities by mapping the existing trees and by showing a solid business case for planting new trees, as well as attracting third party sponsorship to make it happen. We need to plant trees now to allow our children to enjoy their shade in 20 years’ time. 100KTREEs will develop a mapping and modelling toolbox to optimise the planting of trees and to monitor the health of the trees, based on Copernicus and in-situ data. By assigning monetary value to the key attributes of a tree, e.g. pollution absorption, cooling effect, noise abatement, flood risk reduction and increased biodiversity, a number of business cases will be developed for our two partner cities, Copenhagen and Sofia.

Impact

Based on the city support tool and the business cases roll-out the impact of 100KTREEs will also be used to attract third party financing. By means of a crowd science app the consortium will engage with citizens and create awareness of the wonders of trees, also extending to improved life quality and mental health impacts.  It will illustrate how tree planting can be a sustainable endeavor for any municipality. By replicating the decision-support tool in any other city in Europe and ultimately globally based on Copernicus data modelling.