The Delaware Center for Horticulture (DCH), and our project partners DNREC’s Air Quality Management Section (AQM), Delaware Department of Agriculture Forest Service (Delaware Forest Service) and the City of Wilmington, obtained support from the Community Involvement Advisory Council to mitigate the impacts of Urban Heat Islands in Wilmington.

To achieve this goal, the recently completed Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) study for the city of Wilmington, along with the current city tree inventory, combined with GIS software technology provided us with a more refined analysis of the urban forest and assisted us in determining the most strategic locations available to plant trees.  We identified an area with high impervious surface coverage and disproportionately high amounts of particulate air pollution where trees will make a difference in lessening the urban heat island effect.  The site we began with is a parking lot on 16th Street owned by Bethel Temple Community Development Corporation.

Improvements to the Bethel Temple Development Corporation parking lot on 16th Street included planting 15 White Swamp Oak (Quercus bicolor) and two Okame Cherry (Prunus x incam “Okame”), with Community Development Block Grant funding, and installing approximately 2,500 square feet of pervious planting areas.

Before:

And during construction: