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After the Eton and Palisades fires have destroyed thousands of trees that help protect the air, conservation groups in Southern California are urging caution when removing damaged trees.
Altadena Green, a grassroots organization run by volunteer arborists, says some trees are being removed early by the U.S. Army Engineers in Phase 2 of the cleanup process.
“The Oaks are one of the most resilient trees,” said Wynne Wilson, a member of Altadena Green. “They’ll be back and we saw a lot of the orcs being marked for removal.”
However, the group’s efforts are full of mixed results.
“We’ve had two people so far. Despite the massive exemption, their trees have been removed. And they were marked and tagged by our team of arborists,” Wilson said. “We mark the health of the tree, how big it is, what we expect it to live.”
At a recent community conference, Army Corporation discussed how its arborists can use their best professional judgment to determine whether trees are dangerous or pose a risk.
“If they’re in the way that our crew can do debris removal, that’s a conversation with those homeowners before we do the necrotic removal itself,” said Colonel Sony of the Army Company.
Wilson added that legions make good sense, but they may not be familiar with trees native to Southern California.
Starting this week, homeowners using Army Corp’s cleanup services can fill the exemption with a small diagram of their property and show whether they want to keep the tree.
Now, new research shows that these trees may be absorbing more carbon than initially expected.
“During the daytime, trees occupy something like 60% of the fossil fuel CO2 being released,” said USC Professor William Bellelson.
Recent data from air quality sensors located around Los Angeles gives USC researchers insight into the lost canopy in burned zones.
“With the number of trees we lost, how much wood we lost, the absorption of CO2 that we lost because we lost so many trees, and the trees we can plant that we can start taking CO2 and starting to get that CO2 again,” Bellelson said.
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