Houston Green is a project to perform an Urban Ecological Analysis (UEA) for the Houston Gulf Coast region. The purpose of the study is to determine and explain the benefits that trees provide to a community.

Houston Green is managed by a coalition of regional government, business, and nonprofit organizations in partnership with American Forests, the nation's leading nonprofit for trees and forests.

Trees provide important services that are often taken for granted. In addition to the partnership in which trees provide oxygen to humans and animal in exchange for the carbon dioxide produced by humans and animals, trees play a complex role in a community.

The Houston Green project will measure important economic benefits that trees provide and place dollar values on these services. Among their many benefits, trees

• reduce public expense for storm water infrastructure by absorbing runoff and filtering pollutants from water.
• reduce the heat island effect by shading buildings and pavement
• reduce the energy needed for air conditioning
• remove carbon from the atmosphere, reducing global warming
• absorb toxic air pollutants and particulates
• play an important role in reducing ozone pollution

These services can amount to millions if not billions of dollars in environmental and community infrastructure benefits. Of course, the sense of well being and pleasure humans derive from trees have a value without price.

Houston Green will combine aerial mapping, remote sensing data, and field studies to gather information about the distribution, types, and health of trees in the Houston region. Using about 20 sample plots, the study will collect data about individual trees and analyze the data using CityGreen, a computer analysis software tool developed by American Forests and used in similar studies across the United States.

Currently trees in urban settings provide more than $400 billion in storm water reduction. If tree canopy coverage of communities throughout the U.S. were increased to an average of 40%, the storm water management benefit would increase by over $100 billion.

In the Puget Sound watershed around Seattle, American Forests determined that the reduction in canopy over the last 36 years has resulted in excess of over 35 million more pounds of pollutants in the air. These lost trees could have removed greenhouse gases such as ozone and carbon monoxide and captured particulates that irritate airways. Even with current technological advances, filtering that volume of pollutants from our atmosphere would have cost an estimated $95 million.

In Dade County Florida, trees provide direct energy savings of $5.3 million per year to single family, detached residences. Adding one mature tree in an optimal location at each home would increase energy savings county-wide to over $14.4 million per year and lower peak load demand, increasing summer saving from trees by 21/2 times.

The Houston Green UEA, scheduled for completion in September, is one tool, among many, that will ultimately help formulate decisions in reducing the areas air quality problems as well as provide direction for future regional development issues.