If you’re keeping up with the debate about planting trees as a way to help reduce greenhouse gases (GHG), and therefore begin to curb global climate change, you know it’s been an interesting couple of years.

If you saw an article like this one (www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/12/69914) at wired.com, or this one (www.agiweb.org/geotimes/feb06/NN_carboncreditsI.html) from the American Geological Institute’s online newsletter Geotimes, you may – understandably – have started to get a bit confused about the benefits of tree planting.

While no environmentalist worth their stripes would suggest that planting trees is the only thing (or even the one most important thing) that we should be doing to cool the planet and clean the air, the bottom line is that trees, well, cool the planet and clean the air!

Planting in tropical areas should be done; this is a fact with which everyone agrees. Even some critics agree that planting in temperate zones (like the Kansas City region) is a good idea, especially to replace the many trees that are taken out for development. The disagreement comes in when talk turns to the potential for trees to actually warm the atmosphere in places that need to stay cool since their dark leaves absorb and then release heat. In this op-ed piece Dr. Greg McPherson, Director of Research at the US Forest Service center at UC Davis, calmly and clearly addresses this issue, and certainly agrees that large-scale replacement of reflective surfaces (such as ice or snow) with dark-leaved trees would raise the temperature in such areas.

Community forestry types (like Heartland Tree Alliance) are not suggesting such a plan and are in fact focused on the benefits of trees specifically to our urban centers. As Dr. McPherson says in his article, here in our concrete jungles we live with between 50 percent and 70 percent of our surfaces paved over; talk about heat absorption! The “urban heat island effect” is just one of the human-made problems that tree planting and maintenance can address. And the other benefits of reducing the number and intensity of these heat islands – cooler streets that need paving less often, cooler homes that need air conditioners running less often, and cooler heads from stress reduction, to name just a few – are real and have been measured. When we reduce the demand for energy, we reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air.

And there are the many other benefits we expect from our city trees: erosion prevention (leaves slow rain’s descent to the ground and roots protect topsoil), noise pollution reduction, increased property values, cooler neighborhoods, a sense of place and, quite simply – beauty.

So, what’s the bottom line? Plant trees!

For information about how to plant and care for trees in your neighborhood, school yard, church yard or back yard, visit www.heartlandtreealliance.org. Be sure to check back often to the Volunteer page of the Bridging The Gap website (www.bridgingthegap.org/involved/volunteer.html) for opportunities to get involved in the protection and stewardship of our region’s community forest.