News
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Understory Joins Regional Urban Heat Task Force
Understory Studio
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Understory
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2 min
Understory principal Daria Okafor has been appointed to the newly formed Regional Urban Heat Vulnerability Task Force, convened by the Northline Climate Institute to bring together agencies, researchers and community organisations planning the region's response to extreme heat.
The task force will focus on the neighbourhoods most at risk during heat waves, where low tree canopy, dense paving and limited access to cooling put residents' health in danger.
Daria will contribute the studio's research on landscape-based cooling, including three summers of sensor data from the Alderway Cooling Forest in Seattle, which compares how different tree planting patterns cool the ground and where people actually spend time in the shade.
"Shade is public health infrastructure," Daria said. "The question is not only how many trees we plant, but whether the shade lands where people walk, wait and gather."
The task force will publish its first recommendations next year.
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Shade Before Streets: Lessons from a Three-Typology Cooling Forest
Three summers of sensor data from the Alderway Cooling Forest show that how trees are arranged matters almost as much as how many are planted. Dense groves cooled the ground by up to 9°F, but the savanna layout kept people in the shade longest.
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Understory
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