City of Mitcham Tree Planting Program (cooling and greening)
The City of Mitcham has introduced a tree planting program as a part of their Tree Strategy 2016-2025. This strategy aimed to ensure the urban forest and the benefits it provides will be sustained and well managed into the future. It aims to do this by acknowledging and documenting the importance of trees and by applying community asset management principles to them. Tree cover makes the streets and suburbs more liveable with cooler summer temperatures, cleaner air and calmer traffic. The City will look to maintain tree canopy cover by planting 1,800 trees per year to replace the trees lost annually. They have also created an interactive map with the city's urban forest with a link to allow residents to request a new street tree. Research team have also been monitoring temperature and Humidity at sites in Hawthorn and Kingswood. These sites have Inlets that collect stormwater from streets and allow it to soak into the verge through a gravel-filled well where it can be used by trees or soak into the groundwater. Roots extract water from the soil around the well, maintaining the health of the trees and keeping the streets cool in summer. Researchers have also fitted sensors into tree canopies to show how the extra water that soaks into the verges alters the local climate and sap flow meters to show how quickly sap rises to replace the water lost from leaves. Council has established research partnerships with the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board, the University of South Australia, TREENET Inc. and other agencies involved with trees and civil engineering. This co-operative research promises to continue to deliver benefits to Council and the wider community. Ongoing collaboration has the potential to develop Mitcham as a centre of excellence in environmental engineering and urban forest research, particularly regarding managing stormwater and irrigating trees through water sensitive urban design.
Local government
Intervention
Infrastructure and the built environment
The Inlet stormwater research project was funded by the Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board through the Water Sustainability Grants Program 2019/20. The Mitcham Council puts funding towards planting, maintaining and managing trees.
Temperature extremes , Changes in temperature , Riverine flooding
2016
SA - Department for Environment and Water
Urban heat and tree mapping viewer map: https://data.environment.sa.gov.au/Climate/Data-Systems/Urban-Heat-Mapping/Pages/default.aspx Stormwater project research being conducted: https://www.mitchamcouncil.sa.gov.au/our-environment/Looking-after-our-waterways/our-water-initiatives
Links were correct at time of data collection but are subject to frequent change.