NSF Convergence Accelerator Track K: Unraveling the Benefits, Costs, and Equity of Tree Coverage in Desert Cities

The project, consisting of Convergence Accelerator Phase 1, will produce decision-making tools that optimize tree canopy coverage in desert cities. It will balance three central concerns: tempering the effects of heat on health and well-being, water consumption, and equitable benefits of water devoted to trees. These effects pull in different directions, so end-user-oriented decision-making tools will help decision-makers at multiple scales, from householders to community organizations to city and county planners. The overall deliverables for this project are to produce decision-making tools for stakeholders to select and distribute trees while optimizing effectiveness in water-heat tradeoffs. In Phase 1, the team will develop, test, and deliver use-inspired prototype tools, driven by the convergence of community partner discussions with key research questions about urban trees, water, and heat. Phase 1 components include: tree selection and distribution decision-making tools for planners in desert cities; use of thermal data to assess tree water-heat-health tradeoffs; fine resolution mapping of tree benefits and costs, especially water; improvement of software for assessing household energy and water conservation measures with focus on trees; and community health worker training programs for household and neighborhood tree planning. The project will use the large and arid, city of El Paso as its test bed. The broader impacts are substantial. First, this addresses the tradeoff of limited water and urban heat. It puts user-oriented planning tools and promoter training in the hands of community organizations and householders, as well as wider agencies. It directs limited water resources toward reducing urban heat discrepancies most effectively. This set of prototype tools will be made openly available; they will be immediately useful for semi-arid and arid areas of the United States and have implications for water and tree planning across the country. Second, four of the five academic institutions in the proposed project are Hispanic Serving Institutions with especially high fractions of Hispanic students and high classifications for social mobility. Third, the Phase 1 project will include community organizations in the city of El Paso, Texas. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.