By Ashley Archibald, Santa Monica Daily Press

DIGGING IN: Boy Scout Troop 2 creates an urban forest out of a small strip of land Saturday as part of a national carbon trading initiative. photo by Brandon Wise.

A stand of young California sycamores, supported by poles nearly as tall as the trees themselves, line what used to be a dilapidated asphalt pad, sentinels against the waves of invisible chemicals and particulates emanating from the cars below.

The trees represent the intersection of national policy and local achievement as part of both a federal pilot project to study the carbon sequestering potential of the urban forest and the culmination of one Santa Monican’s journey to attain the highest title available to him — Eagle Scout.

Josh Lappen, 17, stumbled upon the planting project through hard work and luck.

Lappen has been a member of Santa Monica’s Boy Scout Troop 2 since he was in seventh grade. That’s several years of knot tying, fire starting and learning to canoe, a specialty of Troop 2.

At the end of the parade of merit badges comes not a new turn, but a mountain — choose to take on the six-month process of elevating to Eagle Scout or simply content oneself with a job well done.

Amongst a host of other requirements, prospective Eagle Scouts have to commit themselves to accomplishing a project for the community. Although there are no hard and fast rules on what the project must entail, they usually contribute something meant to last and consume over 100 hours of effort on the part of the applicant.

Lappen was struggling. He knew he wanted to contribute something to the outdoors that had an emphasis on the environment and sustainability, but hit only dead ends.

“I looked originally at trail building,” Lappen said. “One of the things I especially love about Boy Scouts are the outdoor activities.”

But when he picked up the phone to call a state park and offer free manual labor, no one answered. Budget cuts had taken their toll on the park system to the point that Lappen couldn’t find anyone to even hear his proposal.

“Now that’s a story,” Lappen said.

A multitude of contacts later, Lappen hit upon the city of Santa Monica and contacted City Forester Walt Warriner.

Warriner, it so happened, had an idea.

City Hall signed up with the United States Forest Service to take part in a pilot project that could eventually earn carbon credits by planting 1,000 trees that remove carbon from the air.

Carbon credits are an interesting invention of the capitalist system that puts a value on the amount of carbon dioxide and other green house gases that a company or entity emits. Exchanges, similar to the New York Stock Exchange, allow polluting companies or industries to buy credits so they can effectively produce more pollution.

At the other end of the transaction is another group that promises to either reduce its own emissions or actively remove carbon from the air.

The 1,000 trees being planted in Santa Monica will remove green house gases from the air and eventually make City Hall a player in that market.

Through a grant from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Warriner had the trees and the space, a vegetation-free asphalt strip backed up against a safety fence. Lappen offered him the labor.

“This project was completely up my alley,” Lappen said. “It was everything I could have thought of, wanted or dreamed of in a planting project.”

At the end of February, municipal teams cleaned up the site, removing the cap of concrete and prepping for the eventual planting.

On April 28, the day after National Arbor Day, Lappen and a host of volunteers were ready to get the trees in the ground.

Popular culture holds that it’s difficult to get teenagers to do anything at 8 a.m. except hit a snooze button, but as the clock wound up Saturday morning, the team of teens gathered where 22nd Street meets Michigan Avenue, shovels in hand.

The process is technically simple — dig a hole as deep as the root ball on the end of the young tree and approximately twice as wide. Place the tree inside the hole, and fill it in with soil, but not too high to invite crown rot to the new plant.

Tie the sycamore to stakes placed immediately to the sides, and a tree is planted. Repeat between 19 and 24 more times.

That’s hard work, particularly getting the stakes in the ground, which requires a heavy piece of metal placed on top of the stake that a person lifts and then lets fall, driving the pole downward.

“A day of planting trees is a workout,” Warriner said, watching the young men and women attack the ground with shovels.

In 10 years, with thoughtful care and pruning, the trees will grow to 20 or 30 feet in height, just below the power lines that stretch over the site. Over the course of the next century, Santa Monica officials have committed to monitoring the trees’ growth and reporting back to the Forest Service for use in their studies.

But it’s in two decades that the newly-planted sycamores will have their greatest impact.

“Twenty years from now, these kids will be driving their kids to school,” Warriner said. “They’ll be able to tell their kids, ‘I planted those trees.’ There’s an immense amount of pride in that.”

Levy started with a goal to plant at least 100 ornamental and fruit trees in the Crestmoor community before June. In partnership with the City of San Bruno and San Bruno 4H, he planted 52 of those trees on Earth Day. Julien led close to 250 volunteers in the tree planting.

To read more about Julien’s project, visit the San Bruno Patch, where he updates the community on his progress. We think this kid is pretty cool!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

For more information on the grant and the application, visit the Western Growers Foundation website.

How will you celebrate and protect the planet that we live on? All of us at California ReLeaf hope that you’ll plant a tree!

Trees do so much to help our planet. To learn how they benefit our soil and water, click here. To find out how they clean our air and reduce energy consumption, click here. On Sunday, we hope you’ll give the Earth the gift of trees!

Why Trees Matter

By Jim Robbins

Published: April 11, 2012

Helena, Mont.

TREES are on the front lines of our changing climate. And when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start dying, it’s time to pay attention.

North America’s ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.

The common factor has been hotter, drier weather.

We have underestimated the importance of trees. They are not merely pleasant sources of shade but a potentially major answer to some of our most pressing environmental problems. We take them for granted, but they are a near miracle. In a bit of natural alchemy called photosynthesis, for example, trees turn one of the seemingly most insubstantial things of all — sunlight — into food for insects, wildlife and people, and use it to create shade, beauty and wood for fuel, furniture and homes.

For all of that, the unbroken forest that once covered much of the continent is now shot through with holes.

Humans have cut down the biggest and best trees and left the runts behind. What does that mean for the genetic fitness of our forests? No one knows for sure, for trees and forests are poorly understood on almost all levels. “It’s embarrassing how little we know,” one eminent redwood researcher told me.

What we do know, however, suggests that what trees do is essential though often not obvious. Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrive, so does the rest of the food chain. In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.

Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phytoremediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.

In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call “forest bathing.” A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system, which fight tumors and viruses. Studies in inner cities show that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower in a landscaped environment.

Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature. One of these substances, taxane, from the Pacific yew tree, has become a powerful treatment for breast and other cancers. Aspirin’s active ingredient comes from willows.

Trees are greatly underutilized as an eco-technology. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.

Trees are also the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. The Texas Department of Forestry has estimated that the die-off of shade trees will cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars more for air-conditioning. Trees, of course, sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures.

A big question is, which trees should we be planting? Ten years ago, I met a shade tree farmer named David Milarch, a co-founder of the Champion Tree Project who has been cloning some of the world’s oldest and largest trees to protect their genetics, from California redwoods to the oaks of Ireland. “These are the supertrees, and they have stood the test of time,” he says.

Science doesn’t know if these genes will be important on a warmer planet, but an old proverb seems apt. “When is the best time to plant a tree?” The answer: “Twenty years ago. The second-best time? Today.”

Jim Robbins is the author of the forthcoming book “The Man Who Planted Trees.”

One need not be a Tree Amigo to volunteer with the nonprofit organization dedicated to urban forestry, but those who become Tree Amigos serve as mentors for the many volunteers who commit time and energy as a community service to the agency’s many projects.

The classes will cover such topics as how to properly plant a tree, how to maintain and care for planted trees, how to raise trees in a nursery, how to identify the common trees of San Jose and how to educate others about urban forestry.

The four sessions take place on Thursday evenings from 6 to 8 p.m. at Our City Forest office, 151 Mission St., Suite 151, San Jose, beginning March 29.

In addition, there will be four field sessions on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon in various San Jose locations.

Tree Amigos are expected to volunteer in 10 events within a year planting trees, conducting tree planting demonstrations and assisting Our City Forest programs. No prior experience is required.

To sign up for the classes, call 408.998.7337, ext. 123 or email gro.tserofyticruonull@ssalcogimaeert.

In other Capitol news, Governor Brown issued a proclamation recognizing March 7th as Arbor Day in California. He led the proclamation with the poem “Green and Gold” by Gary Snyder. To read the full proclamation, visit the governor’s website.

March 7 – 14 is California Arbor Week.  Urban and community forests play a vital role in our lives.  They filter rainwater and store carbon.  They feed and shelter birds and other wildlife.  They shade and cool our homes and neighborhoods, saving energy.  Maybe best of all, they form a living green canopy, contributing to our health and well-being, raising our quality of life.

This March you have a chance to get involved in your own neighborhood forest.  California Arbor Week is a time to plant trees, volunteer in your community, and learn about the forest where you live.  By planting trees in your own yard, caring for trees in your local parks, or attending a community greening workshop, you can make a difference.

For more information, or to find an event near you, please visit www.arborweek.org

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