Fighting Food Insecurity in the City: What Role for Street Trees?

Keywords: urban forest, urban forestry, street trees, environmental geography, provisioning ecosystems, food forests, food insecurity, edible wild foods, New York City, Baltimore
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 1

Abstract

There is growing interest in the ways that urban forests can address residents’ food insecurity. While many studies examine intentionally designed food forests, less research recognizes the potential of existing trees to provide nutrient-dense foods, such as fruits, berries, and nuts. Our study examines whether street trees found within two Mid-Atlantic cities have the potential to provide nutritious food materials to food insecure areas. To answer this question, we examined street trees within Johns Hopkins University's Healthy Food Priority Areas (HFPA) in Baltimore, MD, and Food Retail Expansion to Promote Health (FRESH) Program Zones in New York, NY as proxies for food insecure regions. Our analysis uses a geospatial hotspot analysis of edible quality ratings from the Plants For a Future database to determine the overlap of tree species with high EQRs within these areas. Early results show that out of 121,744 street trees, Baltimore has 20,347 (16.71%) trees with higher EQR species present in clustered hotspots, and 2,605 (2.14%) of these trees are in designated HFPAs. Out of the 689,227 New York City street trees, just 41,058 (5.95%) with high EQR are found in clustered hotspots, and 21,240 (3.1%) were found in designated FRESH zones. The street trees clustered in these hotspots have potential to provide healthful food materials to HFPA communities in Baltimore and the residents within FRESH zones in New York City. Greater effort is needed by urban planners to make these opportunities significantly impactful.