• Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund supports the LUF, an interdisciplinary effort launched in April 2021 involving landscape designers, U.S. Forest Service biologists, municipal policy practitioners, and Harvard Chan environmental researchers.

• This was done to minimize the "urban heat island" effect, which consist of city areas with lots of concrete and asphalt.

• These areas absorb high levels of solar radiation and have few trees to provide shade, resulting in temperatures 10-12 degrees higher than those with more vegetation.

• This group has designed connected lanes of trees, shrubs, ferns, and other vegetation running along sidewalks or portions of streets. 

• It also plans to quantify its climate and health-related benefits for U.S. cities using Springfield as a pilot.

• Kachina Studer, a digital technology specialist in visualization research and teaching laboratory, created a series of visualizations of how areas would look if they were filled with trees, which residents could view.

• In the future, this visualization might prove helpful in other U.S. cities, showing residents and city leaders what’s possible.

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