The rising atmospheric temperature that the world is currently experiencing may be offset by something as simple as increasing the number of “green spaces” present in our cities. The findings come from a study done at the University of Manchester lead by Dr Roland Ennos, a biomechanics expert in Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences and a lead researcher in the team. They presented the facts as such: the evaporation of water from the leaves of plants and trees works to cool the air around them in much the same way as human sweat cools the area around a person. Increase the number of plants and trees in the atmosphere and the plants will do the work of alleviating our high temperature predicament for us.

The study calculated that if we were to increase the amount of “green space” by even 10 percent in our urban environments, it would result in a reduction of temperature by as much as 4° Celsius, or 7.2° Fahrenheit. Professor John Handley at the Manchester School of Environment and Development summed it up nicely when he stated: “Such a reduction has important implications for human comfort and health within urban areas and opportunities need to be taken to increase green space cover wherever structural changes are occurring within urban areas, as well as planting street trees or developing green roofs.”

News Story Link:
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/archive/list/item/?id=2780&year=2007&month=05

Discussion questions:
Are there certain types of vegetation that cool more than others?
How can we take these findings and apply them on a micro-scale, to our own lives.