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Listen to the Eh Sayers podcast to meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. Join us as we meet with experts from Statistics Canada and from across the nation to ask and answer the questions that matter to Canadians.
Tegan: Welcome to Eh Sayers, a podcast from Statistics Canada, where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. I’m your host, Tegan Bridge.
I really like The Good Place. It’s a TV show that follows Eleanor Shellstrop’s quest to become a better person through misadventures and lessons in philosophy and ethics. Other than being well-written and clever, the show is also about unintended consequences.
One example is a man might give his grandmother a beautiful bouquet of flowers, but that nice action is tainted: the flowers were grown using toxic pesticides, resulting in an overall net negative impact. You can try to be kind and considerate and do the right thing, but it’s difficult, maybe even impossible, to know the full impact of our actions, good or bad.
I think that way about the climate. It can be difficult to grasp the full impact of our actions even when we’re trying our best to minimize our carbon footprint.
Someone could become a vegetarian, but the carbon cost of their meals, after you consider how far it had to travel from farm to plate, outweighs their neighbour’s home-grown cheeseburger.
To avoid single-use plastic cups, a person could buy a fancy tumbler that will keep drinks ice-cold even in a burning car, but what happens when that fad passes and all of those tumblers end up in a landfill?
A person could make the seemingly environmentally-friendly choice not to print that large document at work, but how environmentally friendly is that choice after all if it's something they need frequently and now they have to boot up their laptop every time they want to access it.
In the wise words of Kermit the Frog, “It’s not that easy being green.”
We have two stories for you today, a double feature, if you will, both on the theme, “It's not easy being green.” We’ll start with a story that we made ourselves here at StatCan and then we have a story from the Simply Science team at NRCan that I think you’ll really like.
Now I would like to draw your attention back to that last example I gave, the one about printing documents because, hello, it’s me. Hi. I'm the problem.
Until very recently, I always thought, well, rather than print documents I'll save them to my computer. If it's something I need when I'm out and about, I'll save it to my little piece of The Cloud and access it on my tablet! I always thought that this was the responsible, green choice... but according to our next guest, I may need to rethink some of my assumptions.
Gerry: Hello, my name is Gerry McGovern and I'm the author of World Wide Waste.
Tegan: How did you get interested in the greenness of the digital world?
Gerry: I think I was inspired by the younger generation, Greta Thunberg generation, and I was coming semi to the end of my career in the tech industry. And I thought, maybe there's something positive I could do over here in relation to the environment. But I didn't expect that there would be a lot because I grew up with this sense that digital is ethereal and all these sorts of things, that it's positive for the environment. So, it was a journey that I expected to be a very short one where I wouldn't find much that could be changed that would improve environmental issues, but has become a very long journey where I've had surprise after surprise and the vast majority of them not good surprises.
Tegan: He’s not the only one who grew up with the sense that digital is ethereal. Today’s tech feels like wizardry to me. I’m not sure if I didn’t know, exactly, or if I just never thought about it, but the Internet… has to exist physically in space somewhere.
And that physical space is data centres: massive buildings which house the computer systems that run the Internet.
Gerry: These data centers are the size of multiple football fields full of thousands, millions of computers wearing away 24/7, storing and processing data, consuming huge quantities of electricity consuming incredible quantities of water because they get very hot
Tegan: What consequences do these data centers have for the environment?
Gerry: We have global warming, which is driven by electrical usage. They claim that they're using sustainability, but because they're growing at such a phenomenal pace, they're driving increased use of coal, massive increased use of natural gas, etc. we're supposed to be reducing oil use by 2030, but it's going to go up by 10%. With all our sustainable energy, etc, that's coming onto the grid, it's not able to cope with the incredible growth that's occurring within economies, and much of that growth is driven by artificial intelligence and data centers.
And then we have a global water crisis, you know, maybe in 20, 30 years, half of the world won't have sufficient water to drink. And many of these data centers are being set up in water-stressed countries. So, we are using water like there's no tomorrow, and we are not using the water that comes from the rain, we're using the water that has been stored over thousands or millions of years in aquifers, and we are draining that at scary rates.
So, what we need to do when we look at the crises that humans face. We can't simply just look at CO2 and global warming. There are nine major contributors to environmental collapse. There's soil, there's biodiversity, there's chemical, and there's plastics, there's phosphorus and nitrogen. So, there are multiple contributors in that environment. And fresh water is one of those nine that is in great decline. And there's just an exploding demand for fresh water from data centers and artificial intelligence.
Tegan:
is the data stared stored at these centers important at least? And I think the answer is clearly well, maybe some of it is, we don't need we shouldn't be... We shouldn't be wrecking the environment so I can have 76 nearly identical pictures of my cat.
Gerry: Yeah, and of course there's different, like some data you may need to store for historical purposes. There's all sorts of, there are different strategies of what's called hot storage and cold storage, and they can be thousands of times less energy intense and less polluting, but most organizations don't... It's easier... Somebody said the definition of big data is that when it's cheaper to store the data than to think about what you have to do with the data.
Tegan: I don't think we can have a conversation about data's impact on the environment without talking about AI. What's AI's impact on the environment, and in what ways is it helping and hindering?
Gerry: Right now, for every positive, it does 100 negatives. The AI has extraordinary capacities, unbelievable long-term capacities, but the current crop of AI, it can't even tell the truth. Open AI released a statement there recently saying that, basically, facts was an active area of research. What’s the purpose of AI if it can't give you accurate information? They don't even claim that they can give you accurate information. It's basically a toy that churns out what sounds like interesting stuff, but if you're an expert in programming or whatever, and you ask AI any sort of deep question, the chances of getting an accurate answer are about 20% that is actually useful.
Now, to do all that, why is AI so much more damaging? So, an AI search will be somewhere in the region of 10 plus times more energy consumptive than an ordinary Google search. And the reason that is, is because in an ordinary Google search, you are going to what is called a flat database or an archive or an index. It's a kind of a pre-prepared page. So it's much less energy intense, whereas an AI search is going much more to a database, which initiates processing activities and interrogation activities.
We have a very immature way of dealing with technology. I came into the industry in the nineties in the web and, “Oh, we have to have a website.” Didn't really think about why we needed a website, but then it was an app, then it was chatbots, then it was, yeah, like we need to think more. And ask, is this useful? Do we actually need it? Most data environments would be a hundred times better if we cleaned up the data first. We wouldn't have neared the problems of storage, etc. At some stage, we need wise heads in management that ask some serious questions. That just because this is a, an innovation does not mean it's an improvement. And just because it's progress does not mean that things are getting better.
Tegan: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Gerry: Exactly.
Tegan: We have to ask ourselves, is this data worth collecting? Keeping? For how long? My friend just sent me a video of her baby saying her first word.
Baby: Mamamamamama!
Tegan: Bravo, baby Charlotte! That’s a piece of sentimental data that’s well worth keeping and storing. On the flipside, I don't actually need 70-odd nearly identical photos of my cat, as handsome as he is, when, really, one will do.
Those are micro examples at the personal, individual level. But this isn't an individual question. Organizations, companies, governments, they're dealing with massive amounts of data, more than ever before.
Well, data stewardship is something that StatCan knows a little bit about, so let's bring someone new into the conversation.
Who’s this?
Eric: Eric Rancourt, Assistant Chief Statistician. Strategic data management methods and analysis at Statistics Canada, and I'm also chief data officer.
Tegan: We've just learned about all of the ways that data and the digital world have a cost, but is that the full picture?
Eric: No, because data is something that is very useful for decision making throughout society.
Tegan: In case it needs saying, the solution to the overwhelming, overflowing, overabundance of data is not gathering up all of the hard drives and killing them with fire. Data is information. And information is powerful. Given that you're listening to a podcast from StatCan, I don't think you need to be convinced that data matters. But data isn't just needed for our society to function. It's also needed for the environment.
Eric: We have started producing information on what is called the ESG framework: environment, social and governance. This is a modern way of having responsible management in organizations and by staging up information through a new experimental dashboard. We have also started working on the Census of the Environment, which will help us have much better information on the extent of all of the environmental wealth and then what is the quality, what is the state of the environment so that when we make decisions, when we have impact as a society on environment, we can measure the change.
Tegan: So, I know that the census population gets sent out every five years. Is that kind of like the Census of the Environment? Is it something similar or is it a little bit different?
Eric: The goal is to establish what is the total population wealth in terms of an environment, in terms of land mass, in terms of agriculture, forest, water, and once we have it, then we can measure specifically what is the change in any of these ecosystems and look at any environmental-impacting actions of humans. How does it change the environment. So, the census is going to be updated at some frequency, but not necessarily on a given date for everything. Every 5 years, let's say,
Tegan: How does the census of the environment envision the natural world in a different way than your average economic indicator? Something like GDP?
Eric: GDP, if we start there, is something that measures the economic activity. So, as we produce, as we exchange money between organizations, people, we measure that. Traditionally the environment has only been measured by how do we destroy it? Because if we cut trees, it produces economic activities, but the trees are going away. With the census, we're going to measure the stock, not just the flow of what is happening. So by starting with the stock, we'll have a measure of the baseline. What is the environment? And then we'll be able to measure the changes. And the impact.
Tegan: It's all about weighing costs. There's a cost to data, but there's also a cost to not having data. If you don't know how big a forest is, how will you know if it's shrinking?
Responsibility is a word that gets applied both to the environment and also to data. Could you talk about responsible data stewardship? What does that mean to you?
Eric: It means that we're not just gathering data for the sake of accumulating. We have a framework that looks at what is the public good. And as part of the Statistics Act, and as part of our activities, we want to make sure that, we integrate the information so that, in the most efficient way possible, we can produce information. So, it's not just about surveys. It's about combining what already exists throughout society so that by the least amount of new data creation, we can answer the questions of society.
I asked Gerry the same question.
Tegan: What does responsible data stewardship mean to you?
Gerry: I think it begins at, should we even collect this data? The first question is, just because, as you said, just because we can, now we have capacities that we never had historically so, hard questions about do we really need this or do we need it at this level? It's not just the quantity of data or the type of data, but the scale levels that we need to collect the data at.
You start with the decision, do we need to collect it at all? Then you say what's the minimum quantity of data that we should collect here?
And then you say, what's the minimum length of time we need to store this data, how quickly can we move it to archive and then how quickly can we move it out of archive into deletion? And if you're a professional archivist, like historically professional archivist keep somewhere between 2 and 5% of overall data. Because if you keep too much, you cannot use the archive. So the job of the archivist is to pick out the really important stuff.
And this is the irony in future societies. They'll actually, in a hundred years, there'll probably be less stuff available for 2020 than there will be for 1920, because we have kept so much stuff, but we have kept it on unstable, because hard disks and even tapes are much less historically stable than our printed paper. So that's the irony, we've never, created more data, but historically we will probably have less of you and this society. And also because AI will have rewritten the history 10 million times, because that's another issue with AI, its capacity to go back and rewrite history.
So I think we need wise people, not intelligent people. Intelligence has got us into this problem. Wisdom will get us out of this problem. We need wise parents. We need wise managers. And wisdom begins with just because we can doesn't mean we should.
Tegan: If someone would like to learn more about your work, where should they go?
Gerry: Gerrymcgovern.com is my main website. And the book, the last book I wrote about these issues is called World Wide Waste.
Tegan: And of course, you can find out more about the Census of the Environment at the StatCan website, as well as find information on the ESG framework. Our guests were Gerry McGovern and Eric Rancourt, thank you both for sharing your expertise!
Our next story comes from the Simply Science podcast team over at Natural Resources Canada. I'll hand the mic off to Joel Houle and Barbara Ustina.
Barb Ustina: Urban forests are amazing. The trees in your city or town aren’t just nice to look at, but they do lots of other things like help improve air quality, reduce heat, and provide a vital ecosystem for so many animals, not just humans.
Joel Houle: There’s a lot that comes into play when managing an urban forest. The concept of planting the right tree in the right location seems simple enough, but there’s so many factors to consider.
Barb Ustina: We reached out to a couple of experts from the Canadian Forest Service to talk about the ins and outs of urban forest management. Stay tuned to hear that conversation.
Joel Houle: Welcome to a new episode of Simply Science, the podcast that talks about the amazing scientific work that our experts at Natural Resources Canada are doing. My name is Joel Houle.
Barb Ustina: And I’m Barb Ustina. We have a fantastic episode for you today. We’re going to explore the world of urban forests and hear about how they can transform concrete jungles into vibrant livable spaces.
Joel Houle: That sounds awesome, Barb. I can’t wait to just dig into it.
Barb Ustina: Dig into it? Joel, are you trying to make a pun here? Like, dig into it? We have to dig dirt to plant a tree or something? Is this a dad joke?
Joel Houle: You think I could just pull a pun out of anywhere? Yeah. You know, like how urban forests are tree-mendous or stuff like that?
Barb Ustina: See! You did it again.
Joel Houle: You know, maybe it’s best we move on.
Barb Ustina: Okay, then. I’ll just pretend that didn’t happen.
Joel Houle: So, with that out of the way, shall we move on to our interview on urban forests?
Barb Ustina: Let’s do it.
Barb Ustina: Joining us today are Ken Farr, who you might be familiar with through his video series on Simply Science called Trees to Plant in an Urban Environment, and Aileen Duncan. She’s also from the Canadian Forest Service. How are you both doing today?
Ken Farr: Doing very well, thanks.
Aileen Duncan: Doing very well, thank you.
Barb Ustina: To start off, why don’t you tell us just a little bit about yourselves.
Ken: I’m the Manager of Science Policy Integration in the Science Policy Integration Branch of the Canadian Forest Service. My background is dendrology. One of the files that both myself and Aileen are focused on is urban forest science and policy and developing a presence for the Canadian Forest Service in the urban forest milieu across Canada.
Aileen Duncan: I’m a Senior Policy Analyst working on Ken’s team, so all the same acronyms and branch structure. I’m also a registered professional forester in training, so learning more about how to manage trees and forests. I’m learning from Ken, actually, who also has that qualification. I do a lot of support on the team in terms of trying to figure out how we might fit in terms of the organizational structure and what the roles of a team could be for the CFS.
Joel Houle: Awesome, thank you. I find the term urban forest to be a little confusing. Can we start off by explaining a little bit about what is an urban forest? What does the term urban forest mean?
Ken Farr: Absolutely. In fact, the term was coined in Canada by Eric Jorgensen at the University of Toronto in the 1960s and has gained fame from there. It depends on who you talk to and what the parameters of the definition are. Essentially, urban forests are the areas where people live, where there are either legacy forests that existed before the community built up or forests that have been constructed. Really, any type of forest that’s in close contact with people.
In the widest definition of the idea, you could think of here in central Canada, somewhere like Algonquin Park, or Gatineau Park in Quebec, as urban forests simply because that’s where people are going to experience nature and be in a forest. It’s a very wide definition. We’re trying to take as broad a definition as possible.
Aileen Duncan: Right. The lines between urban areas and rural areas are not clean. There’s a gradient between them, and so it’s important to consider all of that. Just to ground it in everyday life, things like the trees you see in streets, yes, those count. The trees you see on private yards, so a front yard or a backyard or even a commercial property, those count. They’re part of the urban forest. You see a lot of things along transit corridors or ravines, sometimes stormwater areas or wetlands. They have trees that are near urban areas, and so those count. Also, those forgotten or abandoned little parcels you’ll see where you’re pretty sure there’s a raccoon living in an abandoned shack. Those also count.
Barb Ustina: Okay. I’m really fascinated with this idea that the term was originally coined in Canada, and I had no idea until I just heard from you, Ken. That’s really amazing. I guess based on the description of urban forests, it’s something that anybody who lives in a city will experience in their day-to-day life. Even if you take your dog for a walk around the block, you’re going to experience the urban forest. You don’t have to drive for four hours to go to Algonquin, for instance, or anything like that. It really is a broad definition of types of landscapes, and so on. Can you give me an idea of why urban forests are so important to us, to our lives?
Ken Farr: Well, the first thing to think about is it’s not just cities. It’s small towns, anywhere where people are inhabiting, where there’s a community. If there are trees there, if there’s a forest around, it’s an urban forest by the definition. It’s important to remember that it isn’t necessarily the downtown that has a few trees that we’re thinking about in terms of a presence in the urban forest for the Canadian Forest Service. Every community across Canada. In fact, Parks Canada have thought about their national parks across the country. Where you have a national park, there’s a visitor’s centre. That, by definition of a parking lot and a visitor’s centre building, is urban as well. The definition and the thought of where an urban forest is can be quite varied. We wouldn’t want to think only in terms of cities as having urban forests.
Barb Ustina: What kind of benefits do people get from urban forests?
Aileen Duncan: The ways that urban vegetation contribute to human well-being and health are multiple, very well documented, and they stretch across lots of different disciplines as well. One example that I like to use is shade. Trees provide shade. In terms of mitigating heat in urban areas, and this has a really important effect. You’re seeing, with every 10 percent increase in urban tree cover, a one degree cooling effect to the surrounding area. That gets even more pronounced as you scale out and you have more trees in different areas.
You’re also seeing effects in terms of blocking noise, blocking pollution. For example, when you’re thinking about transportation, having trees alongside a roadway can be really impactful for keeping those particles from combustible engines out of surrounding areas as well as reducing noise. Also, shrubs are really important for that too, so trees and bushes are really valuable. Plus, it’s nice to look at. When you’re thinking about the 83 percent of Canadians who are living in urban areas, it’s really important to be making sure there’s enough urban vegetation to support their health and well-being.
Ken Farr: Yes, and I think the reference to health is important. I think it’s a theme that’s coming along more and more, that there is a demonstrable linkage between human health and human health outcomes, and green space and urban forests. In fact, there are several metadata studies that have been done that draw this conclusion now. It’s something that we need to be thinking about in terms of activities and policy decisions that can help to lead to the betterment of the quality of life for Canadians.
Aileen Duncan: It’s also important to be thinking about the ways that trees support non-human species that live in urban areas. For example, birds, migratory birds in particular, it’s really important to have lots of trees of different structures, of different heights, maybe with a cavity in them, which is a little hole that creatures can use to make a nest, for example. For example, you might see an increase in bird songs when there’s more trees around, and that also has positive effects in terms of human health.
Barb Ustina: Really, and it impacts our mental health as well because any time I take a walk outside in an urban forest, I always feel a little bit better, right? It sort of brightens my day. Now, urban forests, what role does NRCan play in urban forests? What’s our role?
Ken Farr: Well, I would say that the role for NRCan and the Canadian Forest Service is to extend its mandate around healthy forests and forest research into that space. This is somewhat aspirational at this point, but this is what we’re looking for is to find that proper space, as you say. I think it has to do with delivering strategic science that will advance the things we’ve talked about, linkages to urban heat island mitigation, linkages to human health. We haven’t talked about climate change, which, of course, is a major concern and policy activity for the federal government and for NRCan.
All of these are areas whereby extending the existing strategic research our organization engages in, and by that, that means also the kind of policy directions. It creates automatically, organically, a mandate for urban forests themselves. It’s really as we see it, and again, it’s aspirational. It just tilting the camera slightly. The work that’s ongoing right now that pertains to the working forest and the large forest ecosystems in Canada, particularly forest health, are also delivered to the 85 percent of Canadians living in urban areas.
Aileen Duncan: Yes, and some of the research that we’re doing now has applications to urban forests. For example, we’re seeing climate mapping, so the types of species that are appropriate to plant in different areas. We have some researchers at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre who are really leading on that. Forest restoration, post-emerald ash borer disturbance, what kind of survivability you’re seeing moving forward. These types of work fall pretty squarely into the urban and peri-urban landscape.
Joel Houle: I find it interesting that you both mentioned climate change. I had the chance to go visit the Petawawa Research Forest not too long ago, and what they’re doing now is they’re planting trees, white pines and red oaks, that actually tend to thrive in a warmer environment, and then trying to see if in the long term, climate change impacts on the forest, those warmer trees can adapt, and I find it like very interesting. But when it comes to climate change, how will climate change impact urban forests? How are we approaching the issue?
Ken Farr: Well, I think you can argue in many cases that urban forests are the future vision of what climate change is going to be about, and that’s based on considerations of all the asphalt creating heat islands. We’ve all experienced if you have a little thermometer on the dashboard of your vehicle when you drive into an urban area, it goes up by two degrees consistently.
In some ways, it’s a bit of a test bed for just as you said climate-resilient trees that are being developed, and it’s the link between drought resistance, heat resistance, and also understanding the genomic variety that’s present in the trees that are being developed. This is something that CFS is working on the genomics of the internal variability, that is the history of the tree as it developed, and it’s directly again applicable in urban areas, and I think as you were asking, urban forests are in some ways a test bed to see how those linkages are going to work out in the meantime. Understanding that a natural forest environment and ecosystem is going to be quite a bit different in most cases than an urban ecosystem.
Aileen Duncan: I would add to that, that of course, disturbance events in the forest are natural, and trees have evolved to co-exist with those events, but we’re seeing severity and frequency of these disturbance events increasing. For example, Ken mentioned heat stress in urban areas, it gets really hot. It can be difficult for a plant to get enough water in those cases. You might see flooding, which washes away some of the nutrients from the soil more than it would have happened in the past.
Wind stress is something I think about a lot, whether there’s a large windstorm like we saw Hurricane Fiona recently in Charlottetown that was quite bad for their tree cover. You also see ice storms and all these different changing patterns that are happening more and more. It’s really important to be proactively managing the urban forest so that it is resilient to these types of effects.
It’s not all bad. In some cases, we can see a longer growing season, so that’s exciting. You’re also able to perhaps support more species of trees in an area where maybe there was only a couple that were able to be supported before, especially as you move north, there are fewer species that are adapted to live in that cold winter scenario. There are some bright sides. It’s just important to be mindful of how that might go down.
Barb Ustina: Now you talk about proactive management, and it sounds like it’s not as simple as planting a tree, just grabbing a tree from the local nursery and planting it. You have to plant the right tree in the right place at the right time, but how do we ensure compatibility with the environment they’re planted in and honour the existing ecosystems. Is there a guidebook? How can somebody figure this out?
Ken Farr: There are guidelines in various sources but probably not as focused on urban forests as would be desirable. One activity, an enterprise that the CFS and NRCan are involved with the US Forest Service is a re-issue of the Silvics of North America, which is kind of a bible for how and where and what types of trees you plant in forest ecosystems across the continent.
I should mention that the Mexican Forest Service is a partner as well, and one of the changes that will come to that new issue it will include sections on urban forests as well, so not to repeat the amount of information that’s there for natural forest ecosystems, but where there’s a difference where the silviculture, the practices for planting species or the species themselves might be different that will be included.
It’s a good question. I’ll leave it to my colleague Aileen to talk about the arborist world, but there’s a few philosophical questions there as well as, should you be including exotic species that are known to do better under urban conditions than native species? That gets us into the very thorny question about invasive species or just non-native species. It’s that balance between maintaining a legacy forest that may be the case more in Eastern Canada and Toronto and Montreal in those areas, and how you deal with what is more of a construct urban forest in areas where there weren’t naturally forests in the first place that have been built up through the activities of foresters and arborists.
All that to say that the literature is broad and varied. There are Journal of Arboriculture, another one called Arboriculture Journal, where a lot of that information is found. I’d note that our colleagues in the US Forest Service are heavily invested in direct explicit urban forest research, and they publish a lot, so there’s information there to be had, but I’d hand it off on what arborists are doing and how that works in urban forests.
Aileen Duncan: Yes, just to play off what you’ve been saying, Ken, in terms of the Silvics of North America and the different range maps. So, this is talking about where trees have been found in the past 100 years or so, but we’ve been on this Earth a long time. Well, we haven’t necessarily, but plants have been on this Earth a long time, and so the composition of an ecosystem changes over time, and so I think it’s always interesting when you talk about restoration or afforestation, which is planting trees in areas where they weren’t before. What are you restoring to? Is it 50 years ago? Is it 20 years ago? Is it 100 years in the future? This idea of restoration and picking a time period of which you assess the ecosystems integrity is a little bit of a complicated question, and it’s very case dependent.
For your question about what trees are planted where, you did mention the right tree in the right place. I also like to think about for the right reason, and thinking about the right reason is where we start getting into equity and participatory urban planning, especially when you’re thinking about meeting residents needs. It’s important to think about what they might want from that space, and one example I like to use is if someone has had perhaps an experience where they been subject to a robbery or some sort of personal security threat, they might not feel comfortable around trees that block their sight lines, and so what might be a great tree for some reasons might be not appropriate for a certain neighborhood or a certain space. That’s one area where it gets a bit, or you have to think about what residents want.
Another example might be fruit trees. Urban city officials might not want to plant fruit trees because they’re very messy, and they can attract stinging insects, and no one wants to get stung by a wasp. A city official might not choose that tree, but that’s not to say it’s not the right choice for a certain neighbourhood that is perhaps asking for that kind of tree.
I also like to think about the right conditions, and also increasing the potential for success of that tree’s survivability. Urban soil is something I like to think about because it can be a little bit toxic. You got salt. You have pollution. There’s often not a lot of soil volume. It gets really compacted, and so there’s not a lot of life in the soil sometimes, and it makes it difficult for tree roots to grow and expand and get all they need to thrive.
You also have to be thinking about below ground space, and above ground space, of course, as well. You have that classic example of a tree under a utility line that’s just been massacred. It has to because you need to preserve the integrity of the electrical system. We don’t like power outages but also making sure that you’re putting the right tree in the right place to begin with is a really important part of that.
Ken Farr: Yes, one other point that leads from that discussion is around green infrastructure and ecosystem values that is a recognized issue or benefit that comes from urban forest. If you plant a tree, the tree’s roots need access to water. You’ve created a permeable space. These sorts of thoughts if you combine that with hard asphalt surfaces, think about how you can replace grey infrastructure with green infrastructure that’s a bit more designed to move water out of urban areas, or in again depending on how the design works. It’s an area where there’s a lot of thought that can be brought in, and it brings in the contributions of landscape architects as well, arborists as we talked about, the whole range of folks who can be contributing to what is a more functional sustainable landscape, and we are seeing what the problems in non-sustainable issues are with large cities and communities. Urban forests are one way to address that and look at making life more livable and increasing the quality of life for urban Canadians.
Joel Houle: Okay, so you guys took a simple question, like what tree should I plant, and came up with 300 sub-questions. Are there any resources if like say myself or one of our listeners wants to plant a tree in their backyard, is there any resources that you recommend online that could help us answer at least some of those questions?
Ken Farr: Well, the CFS has developed an app called MyTree. It’s very simple. It serves one function. It’s intended to help people looking to plant a tree to make educated decisions about what kind of tree to plant and what kind of conditions that tree would need to live under. Very handy app that you can download free off the NRCan webpage. As always, there are discussions around what are appropriate trees and what aren’t. Our approach is always to say consult a local arborist or tree specialist.
There are books on native trees, and trees that are found in Canada. One called Trees in Canada that was published by the Canadian Forest Service, authored by a professor from the University of Toronto Faculty of Forestry, John Farrar. It’s a good reference to what tree species can be found, with a focus on native tree species but with some inclusion of exotic tree species as well. Then any local nursery, any local plant outlet will have people who know, have the information about what might work well in your area. It’s just a question of being informed, and Google it. What tree should I plant is a great way to go about it as well.
Joel Houle: There you go, and very likely one of your videos will show up from our Simply Science YouTube channel, where you give us some examples of what trees to plant in urban forests. It all comes around. Aileen, anything you’d like to add?
Aileen Duncan: I would say you can also, depending on where you live, some cities will have a tree-planting program, and even if you’re not planning to get a tree through them, you can take a look to see what trees they recommend for planting or what trees are available for their foresters to plant. That’s a good recommendation in terms of looking to see someone who’s done the research already for that specific region.
Joel Houle: I like that.
Ken Farr: As time goes by, I have seen over the years a change in the tree species that will thrive and grow here in Ottawa where we’re located, and I’d say that’s likely to be the case in other cities as well, in other communities. The important thing is to look ahead, and don’t look at the urban forest any more than a natural forest as a static thing, as an oil painting. They’re going to change with time, and once again, it’s a good reason for people interested in planting trees and living with trees is to do the research, do your homework, and stay on top of the topic yourselves.
Aileen Duncan: Thinking about how Indigenous knowledge goes into our work, and something that came to my mind is this idea that if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us, and it’s something that I’m very fortunate to be working in the forest sector and working more closely with the land than some other employment. It really goes to show we are not separate from these systems. The abiotic and biotic interactions that happen at the forest level, at the ecosystem level, they have many implications for how we live in terms of accessing clean water, clean air, places to recreate, to move us out of that high stress, fight or flight response, into more of a common and balanced approach to how we deal with the world, and so that’s something that I think taking more care in how we design our cities and interact with the built environment can really learn from thought leaders in that space.
Joel Houle: Is there anything that we can do besides planting trees to help our urban forests thrive?
Aileen Duncan: In terms of what folks can do at home to help urban forests thrive, I think it’s important to start with curiosity and engaging in those spaces and looking at those spaces and sparking interest in them. Stewardship is really important in terms of being a concrete action that you can take that breeds hope, and I think especially in this time where it’s a little bit challenging to live in the face of climate change, it’s nice to be able to go to a natural space and have some care that you’re putting toward it.
If you’re not in a space where you have time to volunteer, even spending time in that green space and maybe giving it a name or interacting with it in some way is a great way to feel as though you have some ownership in this forest, and psychological ownership is a really important concept that relates to urban forests, and you feel more connected to a city or to a space if you feel that it is yours in some sense, whether it’s legal or not, it’s nice to have that stake in a place.
Barb Ustina: It can also help bring communities together and bring neighbours together in a way as well.
Aileen Duncan: Exactly, and we’re lacking in those spaces and cities nowadays I find.
Barb Ustina: Well, thank you so much for joining us here this afternoon. You bring up so many fascinating points that I’m sure people will be digging in and doing their own research now. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today.
Ken Farr: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Joel Houle: What a great conversation. How lucky are we that we get to sit down with so many different experts and pick their brains.
Barb Ustina: Agreed. And I loved what Aileen had to say. If we take care of the land, the land will take care of us. That’s just a great way to talk about how we’re all connected to the land around us.
Joel Houle: Absolutely. And also, who knew that being around trees was so good for your mental health?
Barb Ustina: That’s right. And they really are key to making our cities healthier, happier, and more sustainable.
Joel Houle: Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you in the next episode.
Barb Ustina: Bye for now.
Tegan: You've been listening to a special double feature edition of Eh Sayers.
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