#Plant optimization

[reasonsforhope]

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024

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[foxfinding]

My friends at University of Nicosia in Cyprus are doing a psychology research project, looking at the relationships between pet/plant ownership and optimism.

It takes about 3 minutes, and they're looking for as wide a sample as possible.

They are taking responses until April 15th.

Please help if you can!

[erevoid]

You are enough, just as you are.

~Meghan Markle

[justalittlesolarpunk]

I’m reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass at the moment and wow, I’ve cried every chapter so far. The way she nurtures her deep generational pain and turns it into love and wisdom is just awe-inspiring. A lesson we could all learn from

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Almond Blossom Stamen No. 4

When the early morning sun hits the delicate pollen-bearing stamens of an almond blossom, the orchards emit a fragrant aroma of sweetness reminiscent of lily or jasmine.

By Optimal Focus Photography

[bal0neymalon3y]

digital art + photography by e-thoughts

[botaniqueer]

Did some 3am plant Tetris, as one does

[mothlau]

modern wolfstar but sirius is a scam tarot reader at small town fairs (he got the cards from a thrift store for a few pounds, watched one video on how to read them and he decided it's his best shot at making some money to survive). cue the fair where he's working ends up in a small town from wales where, lo and behold, he keeps pulling the moon and the death card for everyone. a small child that can't be older than 5? they get the death card. an old lady who wanted to know how her tomatoes will do this summer? death.

now, sirius does know that the death card means new beginnings and it's not as bad as it seems but everyone just starts calling him names and his clientele lessens by the day because everyone finds out about his cards and how he's the bringer of death (literally no one died since he got there so he finds the new nickname a bit overkill).

he's too worried about his scamming abilities though. he just can't shake the weird feeling he gets when he pulls moon out again, even after he takes the damn card out of his pack because he's sick of seeing it (he leaves the death card in because he does find it funny)

but then, on the night before the full moon, when he's just getting ready to pack his cards and cheap props and call it a day, a farmer comes to get a reading. he's still in his overalls because he came straight from the farm here to check out the card reader who the villagers keep saying is predicting deaths on the full moon to see what the fuss is about.

sirius is smitten as soon as the farmer opens his mouth, but imagine his surprise when he hears that he's been slowly making people fear him again, after he just convinced them that he's a kind guy. and imagine his bigger surprise when the cute farmer with hay stuck in his hair and mud on his overalls tells him he's a werewolf.

[solarpunkswy]

Remember that our future doesn't have to be terrible! We're creating it and we should take action to create the future of our desire. Try to make the world a better place each day for yourself and others.

[arwenkenobi48]

I know we’re still in 2023, but here’s my New Year’s resolution anyways

Even though I live in the heart of the city, I’ve decided that I’m going to grow my own fruits and vegetables using a couple of smart gardens (like the one shown below)

That and I recently discovered blue Java bananas, which are blue bananas that taste like vanilla ice cream and yes those are actually real. Another thing I found interesting is the fact that while the bananas themselves are pretty hard to come by (at least here in the UK), it’s relatively easy to buy the seeds for the trees they grow from, so one of my plans for the new year is to plant and grow one of these trees.

In general I’m going to invest more time in taking care of plants and hopefully I’ll be able to provide a loving home for a cat too

Definitely getting in touch with my solarpunk side, as much as I’m able 👍

[swasdoodles]

OC design based on one of the g4 minifigs. Pepperdance here was an Applejack recolour.

Pepperdance was raised on a pepper farm, but found a job at the Gilded Grotto soon after moving to Manehattan. A respected member of the staff, she plays both hostess and taskmaster to its businesses as needed.

[lupinuslepidus]

last couple of weeks of fieldwork happened but were filled with chaos that included a crew of interns, hiring nonsense, permitting nonsense, and extreme weather including both a record-breaking heat wave and thunderstorms. we were bouncing up and down the east side of the sierra (at one point we crossed the CA/NV border, like, six times over the span of two days because the mountains we were in were very precisely bisected by it.) the epic highs & lows of fieldwork included:

sampling in Death Valley National Park during the heat wave. this was actually less bad than when we were sampling across the way from Death Valley, because 8000 feet vs. 5000 feet of elevation is a very noticeable difference when it's over ninety degrees out.

we had a team of interns who were remarkably good sports and helped tide us over when our crew was briefly down to just 2 people!

i later found out that the interns had been, uh, maybe misled about how much work they'd be doing, which went a long way to explaining why they had a chronically exhausted air about them. that's academia for you i guess

got to see the ancient bristlecone pine forest on our days off!

ditched some gear in the field at one point bc i didn't feel like carrying a long metal thingy through an Active Thunderstorm while we were a couple hundred feet off a mountain peak

ditched our camp overnight bc didn't feel like taking the car back up a muddy road following an Active Thunderstorm, since the tires had real bad traction on mud

got told by a motel manager the night that we ditched camp that i? smell like pine? which. was not the worst thing. and makes sense given my constant layer of pine sap residue. but sure was an interaction that happened

got to swim in alpine lakes on our days off!

stopped taking my lunch breaks because it was the only way to even slightly keep up once our crew was back up to 4 people

and by 'keep up' i mean i was still consistently finishing 30 minutes behind the other

i don't. recommend this

a couple nights in various spots, we heard coyote packs yipping somewhere around our camp, which is a haunting and unexpectedly lovely experience. genuinely highly recommend waking up to the sound of coyotes at three a.m.

[itstimeforstarwars]

I spent a decade fucking around instead of preparing for my future because the world was burning down around me and I figured there would be no future but now that I've lived a decade longer than expected I am begrudgingly trying to plan for a future I don’t believe in because if it's already gone on for an extra decade who’s to say it won't go on another fifty years.