Legacies of racism affect urban forest resilience

Historic disinvestment in neighborhoods of color, such as “redlining” U.S. cities, is associated with present-day inequities in urban tree canopy. Here we extend past research focused on disparities in canopy quantity to canopy quality. Using Seattle, Washington as an example, we show that trees in redlined areas can experience more stressful conditions, which may reduce their health and ability to mitigate heat and thus perpetuate inequities in future warmer conditions. Here we provide code and links to datasets we used in analyzing data for this paper.