{"id":68437,"date":"2024-05-29T19:40:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T00:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68437"},"modified":"2024-05-29T19:40:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T00:40:19","slug":"only-the-hardiest-trees-can-survive-todays-urban-inferno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68437","title":{"rendered":"Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today\u2019s Urban Inferno"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today\u2019s Urban Inferno<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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In a rapidly warming world, cities need more tree cover to stay cool\u2014but only certain species can handle soaring temperatures, and often they aren\u2019t native species.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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PHOTOGRAPH: VICENTE M\u00c9NDEZ<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Last fall, I invited a stranger into my yard.<\/p>\n

Manzanita, with its peeling red bark and delicate pitcher-shaped blossoms, thrives on the\u00a0dry, rocky ridges of Northern California<\/a>. The small evergreen tree or shrub is famously drought-tolerant, with some varieties capable of enduring more than\u00a0200 days between waterings<\/a>. And yet here I was, gently lowering an 18-inch variety named for botanist\u00a0Howard McMinn<\/a>\u00a0into the damp soil of Tacoma, a city in Washington known for its towering Douglas firs, big-leaf maples, and an average of\u00a0152 rainy days per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I\u2019m a thoughtless gardener. Some studies suggest that the Seattle area\u2019s climate will more closely\u00a0resemble Northern California\u2019s by 2050<\/a>, so I\u2019m planting that region\u2019s trees, too.<\/p>\n

Climate change is\u00a0scrambling the seasons<\/a>,\u00a0wreaking havoc on trees<\/a>. Some temperate and\u00a0high-altitude regions<\/a>\u00a0will grow more humid, which can lead to lethal rot. In other temperate zones, drier springs and hotter summers are disrupting annual cycles of growth, damaging root systems, and rendering any survivors more vulnerable to pests.<\/p>\n

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Dead larch trees, a result of bark beetle infestation, stand amidst a city forest in Hagen, Germany. In addition to pests, high temperatures and drought have created stress for the native forest.<\/span>PHOTOGRAPH: JONAS GU\u0308TTLER\/GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Dead Joshua trees in the eastern Mojave Desert as seen in 2022. Scientists say that climate change will likely kill virtually all of California\u2019s iconic Joshua trees by the end of the century.<\/span>PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID MCNEW\/GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today\u2019s Urban Inferno In a rapidly warming world, cities need more tree cover to stay cool\u2014but only certain species can handle soaring temperatures, and often they aren\u2019t native species. PHOTOGRAPH: VICENTE M\u00c9NDEZ Last fall, I invited a stranger into my yard. Manzanita, with its peeling red bark and delicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1691,141,1737,4554,34664],"class_list":["post-68437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-cities","tag-climate-change","tag-extreme-heat","tag-trees","tag-urban-landscapes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68438,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68437\/revisions\/68438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}