Dr. Pamela Templer and Dr. Jennifer Bhatnagar, along with Dr. Lucy Hutyra of Earth & Environment, were recently featured in The Brink, which delivers the latest news about research and discoveries from faculties and students.
Led by Bhatnagar, their research focuses on the reasoning behind why city trees grow significantly faster than their rural counterparts. Their effort has won national recognition, and the W. M. Keck Foundation will provide them with $1 million to fund their research. The Keck Foundation’s programs support outstanding science, engineering, and medical research, focusing on novel proposals that strive to break new ground.
The Brink spoke with Bhatnagar to learn more about the survival instincts of urban trees, the societal importance of preservation efforts, and why Keck’s recognition matters. Here’s a look into their interview:
The Brink: What’s the goal of your project and how will you be conducting your study?
Bhatnagar: Recently, my colleagues, Lucy Hutyra and Pamela Templer, discovered that urban trees grow four times faster than rural trees, despite a multitude of environmental stressors in cities and the loss of typical belowground mechanisms for trees to acquire nutrients, tolerate stress, and gain protection from pathogens. The goal of our project is to understand exactly how it is that trees grow faster in cities. We will test the hypothesis that urban trees operate by a different “rule of life” than rural trees, shifting their survival strategies from belowground roots to aboveground canopies, taking advantage of aboveground atmospheric pollution as a source of nutrients, water, and stress protection to support faster tree growth…
Read more about their research and Bhatnagar’s interview with The Brink here.