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Ted Endreny and Lemir Teron, two professors at SUNY ESF, found in their research that low-income community members in Downtown Syracuse are disproportionately affected and suffer more on hot summer days. The added stress is a result of the “heat island” effect, the two said.

“We’re aware that urban heat island is a big stress that is taking lives,” Endreny said. “We know that the human impact is disproportionately to communities that we call environmental justice communities. So, the goal of the research is to make communities more resilient to threats such as urban heat island.”

Heat islands are urban spaces that experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas because of surfaces that absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than areas like grass and lakes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Endreny and Teron found a relationship between the hottest and lowest income areas of the city in their research.

The pair found that Syracuse’s downtown had some of the highest average temperatures while also having a lower income compared to other neighborhoods in the city. Census Tract 32, which encompasses much of the city’s downtown, has a median household income of $31,382. In the same area, 36.5% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the 2020 census.

The effect of increased temperatures, both researchers found, can have negative health effects for those living in the center of the islands. It can cause people to have general discomfort, heat exhaustion, respiratory difficulties and non-fatal heat stroke, according to the EPA.

“Those health issues relate to pulmonary and cardiovascular function,” Endreny said. “Health consequences would be some of the most problematic because it can take a life and you can’t get a life back.”

Through his research, Endreny has narrowed down the main cause of the temperature differentiation in Syracuse to be variances in land cover.

According to Endreny, surfaces such as roofs, parking lots or roads are impervious, absorbing solar radiation that transforms into heat. But when healthy trees with water in its soil cover the same land, they absorb radiation, creating latent energy. Instead of increasing the area’s temperature, water vapor captures latent energy which then evaporates.

Endreny produced a heat map of temperature disparities throughout the greater Syracuse area. The map shows the difference between temperatures with the current land cover conditions and estimated temperatures when the researchers increased the amount of tree coverage.

Courtesy of Ted Endreny

Endreny uses the software i-Tree Tools, which the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Services developed to look at live temperature differences in an area and figure out the causes.

The main goal of his research is to give affected urban communities a way to fight back against the unequal human impacts of rising temperatures.

Teron is working directly with the Syracuse community to empower them to fight back against this inequality.

He leads the community engagement portion of the research, where he works with community groups and organizations to train individuals on i-Trees software so they can see the potential impacts of planting trees in their neighborhoods. This helps the community groups advocate for themselves by prioritizing where people, organizations or governments plant trees, said Teron.

According to Endreny, changing land coverage — for example, by planting trees — is the main way to decrease temperature disparities. The second portion of the heat map Endreny created shows an estimation of how the temperatures across Syracuse would change if the city added 20% more tree coverage and reduced 20% of impervious materials.

In the new model, Teron and Endreny found that temperatures greatly decreased across the city.

In their research, when downtown Syracuse has temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the adjusted map with 20% more tree coverage, the same area would be over 100 degrees in its current state.

People in Syracuse told The Daily Orange that to escape the heat they will go inside either their own homes or another building. Chris David, a resident of Syracuse, said using air conditioning doesn’t help avoid heat entirely.

When walking across the city, David said he will cut through a park if it has open air as well as trees and buildings that provide shade. But some members of affected communities might not be able to afford to run air conditioning, Teron said.

“If you’re making $300,000 a year, it may be nothing for you to turn your air conditioning on,” Teron said. “But what you find in a lot of low-income households, a decision has to be made between, ‘do I run my utilities or is some other necessity going to get neglected if I do that?’”

Education is important for low-income urban communities that are affected most by heat islands to take action such as planting trees, according to Teron.

“Where those trees get planted is a very important question. So when you work with
residents and train them to kind of create a hierarchy or prioritization strategy, then they can work with the city as equal partners,” Teron said.

Published on October 31, 2022 at 2:02 am

Contact Sami: sjcavali@syr.edu