February 2024
·
67 Reads
·
3 Citations
Climate Risk Management
This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.
February 2024
·
67 Reads
·
3 Citations
Climate Risk Management
January 2024
·
31 Reads
·
3 Citations
Urban Climate
January 2023
·
19 Reads
SSRN Electronic Journal
January 2022
·
10 Reads
·
3 Citations
SSRN Electronic Journal
October 2021
·
80 Reads
·
24 Citations
Journal of Environmental Management
Heat-related mortality is one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths in the United States. With changing climates and an aging population, effective adaptive strategies to address public health and environmental justice issues associated with extreme heat will be increasingly important. One effective adaptive strategy for reducing heat-related mortality is increasing tree cover. Designing such a strategy requires decision-support tools that provide spatial and temporal information about impacts. We apply such a tool to estimate spatially and temporally explicit reductions in temperature and mortality associated with a 10% increase in tree cover in 10 U.S. cities with varying climatic, demographic, and land cover conditions. Two heat metrics were applied to represent tree impacts on moderately and extremely hot days (relative to historical conditions). Increasing tree cover by 10% reduced estimated heat-related mortality in cities significantly, with total impacts generally greatest in the most populated cities. Mortality reductions vary widely across cities, ranging from approximately 50 fewer deaths in Salt Lake City to about 3800 fewer deaths in New York City. This variation is due to differences in demographics, land cover, and local climatic conditions. In terms of per capita estimated impacts, hotter and drier cities experience higher percentage reductions in mortality due to increased tree cover across the season. Phoenix potentially benefits the most from increased tree cover, with an estimated 22% reduction in mortality from baseline levels. In cooler cities such as Minneapolis, trees can reduce mortality significantly on days that are extremely hot relative to historical conditions and therefore help mitigate impacts during heat wave conditions. Recent studies project highest increases in heat-related mortality in the cooler cities, so our findings have important implications for adaptation planning. Our estimated spatial and temporal distributions of mortality reductions for each city provide crucial information needed for promoting environmental justice and equity. More broadly, the methods and model can be applied by both urban planners and the public health community for designing targeted, effective policies to reduce heat-related mortality. Additionally, land use managers can use this information to optimize tree plantings. Public stakeholders can also use these impact estimates for advocacy.
April 2021
·
108 Reads
·
26 Citations
Ecological Modelling
Urban tree cover contributes to human well-being through a variety of ecosystem services. In this study, we focus on the role that trees can play in reducing temperature during warm seasons and associated impacts on human health and well-being. We introduce a method for quantifying and valuing changes in premature mortality from extreme heat due to the changes in urban tree cover and apply this method to Baltimore City, Maryland. The model i-Tree Cool Air uses a water and energy balance to estimate hourly changes in air temperature due to alternative scenarios of tree cover applied across 653 Census Block Groups. The changes in temperature are applied to existing temperature-mortality models to estimate changes in health outcomes and associated values. Existing tree cover in Baltimore is estimated to reduce annual mortality by 543 deaths as compared to a 0% tree cover scenario. Increasing the area of current tree cover by 10% of each Census Block Group reduced baseline annual mortality by 83 to 247 deaths (valued at $0.68-2.0 billion applying Value of Statistical Life estimates). Over half of the reduced mortality is from the over 65 year age group, who are among the most vulnerable to extreme heat. Reductions in air temperature due to increased tree cover were greatest in downtown Baltimore where tree cover is relatively low and impervious cover is relatively high. However, the greatest reductions in mortality occurred in the outskirts of Baltimore where a greater number of people who are over 65 years in age reside. Quantifying and valuing the health benefits of changes in air temperatures due to increased tree cover can inform climate adaptation and mitigation plans by decision makers. Developing adaptation strategies to effectively address these issues will become increasingly important in the future under changing climates and an aging population.
... To demonstrate and refine our approach, we conducted two case studies in Waterbury, Connecticut and Maricopa County, Arizona in the United States. In this paper, we present results from Waterbury relevant to flooding, while a companion paper focuses on extreme heat in Phoenix (Sinha et al., 2022). ...
February 2024
Climate Risk Management
... Additionally, the community can provide support through resources or facilities the school may not have. Through this Collaboration, students get wider and more varied learning opportunities and are motivated to achieve higher achievements (Sinha et al., 2024). Close relationships between schools and communities can also create a sense of shared responsibility for educational success to achieve the goal of improving learning outcomes more effectively. ...
January 2024
Urban Climate
... Another indicator that may help narrow down block groups that are specifically 319 vulnerable to extreme heat is the count of Superfund sites that have remedies that are vulnerable 320 to extreme heat. This indicator (described in more detail in Sinha takes for contaminants to reach communities, wind and hydrology patterns were considered 332 rather than simple radial distances (Sinha et al., 2022). Given that the focus of this paper is 333 extreme heat, we present data for the summer, during which the predominant wind direction is 334 mostly from south-southwest direction. ...
January 2022
SSRN Electronic Journal
... Tree cover is particularly essential in mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effect, a phenomenon where cities experience higher temperatures than nearby rural areas due to heat-retaining materials like concrete and asphalt. In densely populated regions, the lack of suf icient tree cover intensi ies this effect, raising the risk of extreme heat during summer, especially during heatwaves (Sinha et al., 2022;Sheridan et al., 2024). ...
October 2021
Journal of Environmental Management
... For instance, urban forests offer critical habitat for various species (Drago et al., 2017;Sasaki et al., 2016). Cultural services from urban forests encompass non-material benefits, including aesthetic appeal (Hu et al., 2022), cultural and recreational opportunities (Baumeister et al., 2020;Elze and Banzhaf, 2022), and enhanced physical and mental health for city dwellers (Engemann et al., 2019;Sinha et al., 2021). ...
April 2021
Ecological Modelling