Urban trees provide a wide range of benefits from the intuitive—providing shade, for example—to the surprising: improved human health and reduced crime. Recent research has shown that exposure to trees is associated with a wide range of positive health outcomes including, higher birth weight, lower rates of cardiovascular and lower-respiratory disease, reduced non-accidental mortality, lower rates of childhood asthma and leukemia, and reductions in the prevalence of ADHD. In addition to the health benefits of trees, several studies have shown that trees are associated with lower crime rates. This talk will summarize these findings and show that trees are an under-appreciated, but essential, part of our public-health and public-safety infrastructure. 

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Dr. Donovan received his PhD is forest economics from Colorado State University in 2001. Since then, he has worked as an economist for the USDA Forest Service in Alaska and Oregon. His primary research focus is quantifying the benefits of urban trees. These have ranged from intuitive benefits—reduced summertime cooling costs and increased home values, for example—to less intuitive benefits such as crime reduction. He has worked extensively on the relationship between trees and public health finding that mothers with trees around their homes are less likely to have underweight babies, and when trees are killed by an invasive pest, more people die from cardiovascular and lower-respiratory diseases. Currently, he is focusing on how exposure to plant diversity may protect against a range of immune diseases. 

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