Archive for March 1st, 2013
Street Tree Planting Is In Full Swing | Richmond Tree Stewards
http://richmondtreestewards.org/2013/03/01/street-tree-planting-is-in-full-swing/
Street Tree Planting Is In Full Swing
Thanks to the efforts of Richmond’s three city arborists, new members of the community forest are showing up all over town, especially on main thoroughfares. You can recognize them by the fresh ring of mulch at the bottom and the white mark several feet up the trunk. The mulch will help retain moisture and add organic matter; the white mark identifies this as a first year tree that will need priority when it’s time to water.
If you adopted a tree and have not seen your tree yet, please know that planting will continue until mid spring. Also, be aware that not all the trees are planted at the same time in a given neighborhood; it’s possible for your neighbor to get his tree before you do.
The watering season for new trees begins in May; watering bags will be placed on the trees soon. If your garden hose will reach a street tree planted this year or last, please help these trees get off to a good start by watering at least every two weeks (every week when it gets hot and dry). When citizens help take care of the trees near their homes, the water trucks will be able to water trees in medians and on busy streets more often and we will have healthier, stronger trees providing benefits across town.
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Take care of trees – they will pay us back!
A Skyscraper Covered In Trees And Shrubs Is Rising In Milan
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-skyscraper-covered-in-trees-and-shrubs-is-rising-in-milan-2013-2
A Skyscraper Covered In Trees And Shrubs Is Rising In Milan
Forget London’s monolithic new Shard, all eyes will surely be on the Bosco Verticale when it opens in Milan at the end of this year.
The new skyscraper promises to bring a hectare of forest into the city’s central business district, as well as hundreds of new homes. Rather than cold steel and glass, the surface of this high-rise will ripple with organic life.
Made of two towers – one 80m high, the other 112m – Bosco Verticale is currently being planted with 730 specially cultivated trees, 11,000 groundcover plants and 5,000 shrubs. One of the principal architects, Stefano Boeri, calls it both “radical” and an “experiment”; a reaction against the “high parallelepipeds, clad by glass, steel or ceramic” he’s witnessed in Dubai.
Big deal for ‘biological architecture’
Jill Fehrenbacher, editor of Inhabitat and a follower of architecture trends, says proposals for buildings featuring copious vegetation are increasingly common. “I have yet to see very many of these ‘living building’ designs become reality, which is why the Bosco Verticale is such a big deal,” she says.
The interdisciplinary team working on the project includes botanists as well as engineers. Their research has ventured into testing the wind resistance of certain species of tree in wind tunnels, as well as finding a suitably lightweight substrate able to meet plants’ nutritional demands. The residents’ needs are also important – trees will be trimmed so foliage doesn’t interrupt their views.
Boeri explains that the Bosco Verticale “hands over to vegetation itself the task of absorbing the dust in the air and of creating an adequate micro-climate in order to filter out the sunlight. This is a kind of biological architecture, which refuses to adopt a strictly technological and mechanical approach to environmental sustainability.”
Singapore sky gardens
The Park Royal on Pickering hotel in Singapore is another example of a towering building-cum-garden in a dense urban area, but this one is already open for business. WOHA, the architects, says it was inspired by headlands, promontories and planted terraces. Richard Hassell, the firm’s founding director, enjoys blurring the distinction between hard architecture and soft landscapes but admits that working with plants is a challenge.
“For architects, it is quite a change in mindset to deal with living things,” he says. “Normally an architect is trying to make things that are as static as possible, and resist wear and tear. But plants grow, and change, and drop leaves, and wilt and die if you forget about them.”
Over-ambitious?
A ‘living building’ is never really finished. It will change over time and will require much more maintenance than one without plants. For both the Park Royal on Pickering and the Bosco Verticale, the upkeep will be centralised and carried out by specialist staff. Could such projects be called too labour- and energy-intensive? Jill Fehrenbacher doesn’t think so.
“Living plants…clean the air and produce oxygen, they help humidify indoor air, they reduce storm water runoff and the urban heat island effect, and they help insulate a building,” she argues. “Even though skyscrapers like the Bosco Verticale inherently use a tonne of resources and energy – simply by virtue of being a high-rise building – all of those trees and plants are going to be beneficial to the building occupants, neighbours and local environment.”
And perhaps ‘living buildings’ have worth based on aesthetics alone. “At the very worst, a garden is a delight to the users, so even if there is minimum environmental value, there is still immense value in having more green spaces in dense cities,” says Richard Hassell.
The visual impact of buildings like these can’t be underestimated. Apparently Singapore’s taxi drivers now make detours to drive past the planted hotel, while Stefano Boeri talks about his structures being “ecology billboards”. Jill Fehrenbacher says such buildings will be everywhere in twenty years, as we “try to recreate some sort of primeval garden of paradise in our homes and workplaces”.
Future landscapes
More than mere gardens, planted high-rises have the potential to change our cityscapes. “For sure this is an experiment but to have a sequence of Bosco Verticales, to reach a critical mass, this could be quite interesting,” says Boeri. “To deurbanise the urban environment is a radical alternative to expensive technology.”
The proof of a building’s appeal is surely when the architect himself decides to move in. Boeri has reserved himself a small apartment in Bosco Verticale, explaining he’s “extremely attracted” to the idea of living high up in these soon-to-be leafy towers of trees.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
Scientists Warn of Sperm Count Declines Linked to Pesticide Exposure
Oh boy. ( or ” no boys or girls ” )
:0
Scientists Warn of Sperm Count Declines Linked to Pesticide Exposure
Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–March 1, 2013) In a literature review published in Toxicology last week, researchers found that environmental and occupational pesticide exposure was strongly associated with declines in sperm count. Researchers Sheena Martenies, BS, and Melissa Perry, ScD., MHS., determined that of the 17 studies evaluated, 15 of them reported significant associations between pesticides and semen quality.
The researchers counted semen quality according to concentration of sperm over an area, their motility and ability to move, as well as their shapes. Researchers targeted studies on DDT, HCH, and abamectin, grouping pyrethroids and organophosphates by class. What they found was striking: almost all the studies reported a decrease in sperm concentration; decreased motility was also reported though less frequently; while morphological changes were not strongly associated in studies—only two indicated any changes to sperm shape. These findings build on a growing body of evidence that pesticide exposure at environmental or occupational levels diminished sperm health.
In addition to the U.S. findings, studies conducted on French, New Zealander, Indian, Tunisian, and Israeli men have all found decline in sperm count. Some studies record a drop by approximately 50% between 1940 and 1990, no small amount.
These results might not be surprising as sperm production is regulated by the endocrine system, a highly sensitive system of hormone regulators. A study on Mexican workers in the floral industry, where workers are routinely exposed to organophosphate, finds that workers not only have increased levels of testosterone, but also suppressed levels of follicle stimulating hormone and inhibin b, which are two sensitive markers for sperm production.
The study highlights the importance of generating strong pesticide regulations that incorporate endocrine disruptors for worker protection from pesticide exposure. In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with evaluating pesticides for endocrine disruption under the Food Quality Protection Act. While EPA has completed Tier 1 evaluations for 79 chemicals, it is unclear how its methodology is taking into account low-dose responses that deviate from traditional dose-response curves. With endocrine disruptors, it is only low levels of exposure that is required to severely threaten human and animal reproductive and hormonal functioning.
To learn more and contribute to our cause against the use of pesticides, join us in April 5-6, in Albuquerque, NM for Beyond Pesticides’ 31st annual National Pesticide Forum, “Sustainable Families,Farms and Food.” With top national scientists, local and national activists, and concerned citizens as we share information on the issues local communities face, craft solutions and catalyze networks to manifest positive health and environmental policy and change. Discussions on the impact that pesticides and other endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have on human and environmental health would be led by renowned scientists and medical professionals like Tyrone Haynes, PhD, Lynn Carroll, PhD, Joel Forman, M.D., Issac Pessah, PhD, and others. For more information on the forum, visit http://www.beyondpesticides.org/forum/.
For more on EDCs, download Beyond Pesticides’ Endocrine Disruption brochure (bi-fold), or read Beyond Pesticides article, “Pesticides That Disrupt Endocrine System Still Unregulated by EPA.”
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Source: http://www.beyondpesticides.org
VA.PHC 