The “project,” consisting of Convergence Accelerator Phase 1, will produce decision-making tools that optimize tree canopy coverage in desert cities. It will balance three central concerns: tempering the effects of heat on health and well-being, water consumption, and environmental justice (equitable benefits of water devoted to trees). These effects pull in different directions, so end-user-oriented decision-making tools will help decision-makers at multiple scales, from householders to community organizations to city and county planners. The overall deliverables for this project are to produce decision-making tools for stakeholders to select and distribute trees while optimizing justice and effectiveness in water-heat tradeoffs. In Phase 1, the team will develop, test, and deliver use-inspired prototype tools, driven by the convergence of community partner discussions with key research questions about urban trees, water, heat, and social equity. Phase 1 components include: tree selection and distribution decision-making tools for planners in desert cities; use of thermal data to assess tree water-heat-health tradeoffs; fine resolution environmental justice mapping of tree benefits and costs, especially water; improvement of software for assessing household energy and water conservation measures with focus on trees; and community health worker training programs for household and neighborhood tree planning. The project will use the large, arid, and relatively low income/high Hispanic city of El Paso as its test bed.
The broader impacts are substantial. First, this addresses environmental justice in terms of the trade off of limited water and urban heat. It strengthens procedural justice by putting user-oriented planning tools and promoter training in the hands of community organizations and householders, as well as wider agencies. It strengthens distributive justice by directing limited water resources toward reducing urban heat inequalities most effectively. This set of prototype tools will be made openly available; they will be immediately useful for semi-arid and arid areas of the United States and have implications for water and tree planning across the country. Second, four of the five academic institutions in the proposed project are Hispanic Serving Institutions with especially high fractions of Hispanic students and high classifications for social mobility. Third, the Phase 1 project will include community organizations in the heavily Hispanic (84%) city of El Paso, Texas, where the poverty rate is nearly twice that of the national figure. The project will target low-income portions of El Paso and census tracts that have been determined to be vulnerable by the US Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.