Trees in the City
Many forests need people to help them stay healthy. Keeping California forests healthy is what the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection does. Workers remove dead brush and trees from the forests. Dead brush and trees can fuel forest fires. Trees can get sick. There are different diseases and insects that attack trees. Forest workers try to treat sick trees. People also remove non-native plants from forests. Non-native plants are plants that grow naturally in another place. A non-native plant can be very harmful to an area. Some non-native plants spread so much that they kill the plants. Keeping forests healthy is a lot of work!
The department takes care of big forests, such as the forest in Mount San Jacinto State Park. It also takes care of small forests, much smaller forests! The department has a special program for these smaller forests. It is called the Urban Forestry Program. This government program works with many community groups. Together, they plant and care for lots of trees. Each year, the program spends over a million dollars on trees in towns and cities in California.
Many people think that sidewalks lined with trees are pretty. But the Urban Forestry Program is about more than pretty streets. Living trees are an important natural resource. Trees growing in towns and cities provide many benefits. Trees can shade homes and keep them cooler. This means that people use less energy to cool their homes when it is hot outside. Trees help filter the air we breathe. Some storms leave a lot of water on the ground. This water flows into drains and back into bodies of water. Trees help absorb water on the ground after storms. This keeps more water in the ground to help many things grow. And trees give us cool, shady sidewalks to walk along in the summer.
Look at the trees in your town or city. Some of them may have been planted by the Urban Forestry Program.
Vocabulary
Sources:
- Urban and Community Forestry
- http://www.fire.ca.gov/php/rsrc-mgt_urbanforestry.php
- California Urban Forests Council
- http://www.caufc.org/about.html