DATE: Friday, May 16, 1997                  TAG: 9705160677

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   53 lines

TREES HELP US RECOVER AND FEEL COOLER, FANS BELIEVE

Folks, we have more reason than ever to hug trees.

So help me, patients get out of the hospital sooner if they can see trees from the windows of their rooms.

That word, and many another encouraging one, came Thursday from Deborah Gangloff of American Forests. She was one of 26 speakers at a seminar of the Elizabeth River Project in Virginia Beach.

``Insurance companies need to be planting trees around hospitals,'' she suggested.

Also, employees feel less stressed when they can see trees, Gangloff said, and there is less domestic violence in tree-lined neighborhoods.

``Green just makes us feel better,'' she said.

I've always found trees restful, most conducive to lazing around in the shade, even snoozing; but it never occurred to me they had a major economic impact or a soothing effect on entire populations.

American Forests, founded in 1885, uses scientific methods including satellite images and aerial photographs to analyze the effects of urban ecosystems.

It discovered that after downtown Atlanta lost 60 percent of its tree canopy, the temperature there rose 12 degrees above that of the city's other areas.

On a positive note, she disclosed that the presence of a 30 percent canopy in Austin, Texas, reduces stormwater runoff by 28 percent and thereby saves $128 million that otherwise would be spent on maintenance of stormwater controls.

Savings from tree plantings can be determined for individual homeowners. Gangloff said that the presence of three trees around a house reduces its air-conditioning bill by half.

To stabilize the soil and help mitigate pollution, she said, American Forests has 81 projects propagating trees in 34 states.

The declining of buffers of trees alarmed Fran Flanigan of the Baltimore Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time that conservationists are trying to restore rivers, they should be working upstream to renew buffers that save the soil, cool the waters for fish, suck up nitrogen and filter other pollutants.

Americans should develop more than 2,000 buffers by the year 2000 - three times the present rate of restoration, Flanigan said.

Advocates of landscape management must keep it voluntary and be sensitive to property owners' concerns and look for such inducements as tax relief, she advised.

A host of ideas were discussed in workshops. Col. Robert H. Reardon, district commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said that he believed the Elizabeth River Project will be a model for the nation as people come together not to fight but to solve problems.

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