How Google can help save our ecosystem

Singapore, March 1: Using nearly 100,000 images extracted from Google Street View, a team of researchers has developed a method to map and quantify how street trees regulate ecosystem services. With urban populations exploding in megacities like Tokyo, Shanghai and Delhi to well over 20 million people, it is important to understand how green spaces contribute to urban sustaibility, said the researchers from the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, a research outpost of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). “In addition to cooling urban microclimates, these trees, which are integrated within dense urban street networks, also provide other benefits such as reducing the risk of flash flooding and cleaning the air,” explained Peter Edwards, Principal Investigator and Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre. Trees and plants offer some relief, especially in urban areas with higher ambient temperatures, by providing shade and increasing evaporative cooling. (IANS)

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