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Get RSS FeedState project to line roads with trees begins in Gahanna
* OSU students and experts plant 600 salt-tolerant trees along I-270 and Hamilton Road in a new initiative.
By PAMELA WILLIS
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Have you hugged a tree lately?
A new state tree-planting initiative called "Greening the Highways" began June 2 in Gahanna, along Interstate 270 and Hamilton Road, where students and horticultural experts from Ohio State University planted 600 salt-tolerant trees.
When it comes to trees, statistics are sobering to horticultural specialists such as Gahanna resident Hannah Mathers, an associate professor at OSU and state extension specialist in nursery and landscape.
"By the year 2030, only 10 percent of the world's forest cover will be left at our current rate of cutting," she said. "Trees are huge sinks for carbon dioxide and methane and nitrous oxide. They are the best purifiers of our air to help prevent lung diseases."
A new state tree-planting initiative called "Greening the Highways" began June 2 in Gahanna, along Interstate 270 and Hamilton Road, where students and horticultural experts from Ohio State University planted 600 salt-tolerant trees.
When it comes to trees, statistics are sobering to horticultural specialists such as Gahanna resident Hannah Mathers, an associate professor at OSU and state extension specialist in nursery and landscape.
"By the year 2030, only 10 percent of the world's forest cover will be left at our current rate of cutting," she said. "Trees are huge sinks for carbon dioxide and methane and nitrous oxide. They are the best purifiers of our air to help prevent lung diseases."
Mathers said most trees planted along highways do not survive.
"Many urban trees live only seven years and most planted along highways live barely past the first year," she said. "All the good things that trees do for our environment don't start happening significantly until a tree is 30 years of age. Our trees aren't making it to that stage, so we have to focus on ways to help those trees survive."
Mathers said there are 600 million acres of right-of-way along highways in the United States, not including interchanges, which are usually about five acres apiece.
"There is a huge opportunity to take this wasteland, which isn't used now for anything but mowing, which creates more emissions, to turn it into land that can mitigate carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide and methane," she said. "But we have to get the trees to survive.
"It's really exciting to be working on the cutting edge of a project that is so critical to the survival of Planet Earth," she said.
The Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (and Ontario's Vineland Research and Innovation Centre are leading the initiative, with Mathers as project leader.
Of the 2 million trees the Ohio Department of Transportation plants along highways every year, fewer than 10 percent survive, and even in low-stress urban areas, only 60 percent survive the first five years, Mathers said.
"I would say that's a huge waste of taxpayer money," she said.
She said the project began when she was in Ontario doing contract work.
"The landscape architect for the Ministry of Transportation was retiring and he told his 'powers to be' that he had been planting highway sites for more than 25 years, and had only one successful planting to point to," she said. "He told them if they continued planting trees the way they were planting, they might as well quit."
Mathers said the architect consulted the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, where she got in on the project, using her ideas about previous research on growing salt-tolerant trees in a retractable-roof greenhouse.
"We wanted to compare the survival rates of the trees we grew in the greenhouse with the trees being planted now," she said. "In 2009, 5,200 trees were planted in Ontario, and we supplied 525 of those trees."
Mathers said soon after the project in Ontario got off the ground, she wanted to start one in Ohio.
She said initial contact with ODOT was not promising, with people telling her "trees are highway hazards." ODOT now supports the project through the Gateway program.
"I knew Gahanna was changing the ramp at I-270 and Hamilton, so I contacted city engineers and they were excited about working with us," she said.
Mathers said her OSU research students have been growing trees for the past six years in a retractable-roof greenhouse and studying which varieties will tolerate stress and survive best along highways.
A grant for $40,000 from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center began the project in Gahanna.
"We planted four species of trees, all tolerant of road salt, including red maple, paper birch, hackberry and tree lilac," she said. "They are all trees native to Ohio. We will be looking at survival rates and coming up with best management, plus measuring the impact of the trees on the environment in terms of carbon sequestration and mitigation of the three greenhouse gases: methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide."
Mathers said she hopes other cities will follow Gahanna's lead and contact the Gateway program and other sources for tree planting.
"We hope we can demonstrate the survival of the trees and get more cities interested in doing mass planting," she said. "If we can get more of the 600 million acres along United States highways planted, we won't have as much of an issue of deforestation and it could also impact climate change."
Graduate and doctorate students involved in the project are Michelle Bigger, Phoebe Gordon and Kyle Daniels from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
"If you just planted one row of trees along all the highways in Ohio, you could plant 1 billion trees," Mathers said. "The tree plantings could also create hundreds of thousands of jobs to stimulate the economy. During the Great Depression, one of the things done by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a tree-planting program that was credited for helping to bring the country out of the economic slump."
"Many urban trees live only seven years and most planted along highways live barely past the first year," she said. "All the good things that trees do for our environment don't start happening significantly until a tree is 30 years of age. Our trees aren't making it to that stage, so we have to focus on ways to help those trees survive."
Mathers said there are 600 million acres of right-of-way along highways in the United States, not including interchanges, which are usually about five acres apiece.
"There is a huge opportunity to take this wasteland, which isn't used now for anything but mowing, which creates more emissions, to turn it into land that can mitigate carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide and methane," she said. "But we have to get the trees to survive.
"It's really exciting to be working on the cutting edge of a project that is so critical to the survival of Planet Earth," she said.
The Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (and Ontario's Vineland Research and Innovation Centre are leading the initiative, with Mathers as project leader.
Of the 2 million trees the Ohio Department of Transportation plants along highways every year, fewer than 10 percent survive, and even in low-stress urban areas, only 60 percent survive the first five years, Mathers said.
"I would say that's a huge waste of taxpayer money," she said.
She said the project began when she was in Ontario doing contract work.
"The landscape architect for the Ministry of Transportation was retiring and he told his 'powers to be' that he had been planting highway sites for more than 25 years, and had only one successful planting to point to," she said. "He told them if they continued planting trees the way they were planting, they might as well quit."
Mathers said the architect consulted the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, where she got in on the project, using her ideas about previous research on growing salt-tolerant trees in a retractable-roof greenhouse.
"We wanted to compare the survival rates of the trees we grew in the greenhouse with the trees being planted now," she said. "In 2009, 5,200 trees were planted in Ontario, and we supplied 525 of those trees."
Mathers said soon after the project in Ontario got off the ground, she wanted to start one in Ohio.
She said initial contact with ODOT was not promising, with people telling her "trees are highway hazards." ODOT now supports the project through the Gateway program.
"I knew Gahanna was changing the ramp at I-270 and Hamilton, so I contacted city engineers and they were excited about working with us," she said.
Mathers said her OSU research students have been growing trees for the past six years in a retractable-roof greenhouse and studying which varieties will tolerate stress and survive best along highways.
A grant for $40,000 from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center began the project in Gahanna.
"We planted four species of trees, all tolerant of road salt, including red maple, paper birch, hackberry and tree lilac," she said. "They are all trees native to Ohio. We will be looking at survival rates and coming up with best management, plus measuring the impact of the trees on the environment in terms of carbon sequestration and mitigation of the three greenhouse gases: methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide."
Mathers said she hopes other cities will follow Gahanna's lead and contact the Gateway program and other sources for tree planting.
"We hope we can demonstrate the survival of the trees and get more cities interested in doing mass planting," she said. "If we can get more of the 600 million acres along United States highways planted, we won't have as much of an issue of deforestation and it could also impact climate change."
Graduate and doctorate students involved in the project are Michelle Bigger, Phoebe Gordon and Kyle Daniels from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
"If you just planted one row of trees along all the highways in Ohio, you could plant 1 billion trees," Mathers said. "The tree plantings could also create hundreds of thousands of jobs to stimulate the economy. During the Great Depression, one of the things done by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a tree-planting program that was credited for helping to bring the country out of the economic slump."
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