The Shade You Depend On May Disappear This Summer. Cities Are Launching Emergency Tree-Saving Plans

In several Indian cities, the fight against extreme summer heat has taken an unusual turn: municipal workers are now watering mature roadside trees to stop them from collapsing before the monsoon arrives. Last Friday in Mumbai, a large tree crashed onto a moving autorickshaw in Khar, critically injuring two girls. A few days later, civic officials began something the city has never really attempted at this scale before: watering fully grown trees across high-footfall areas. Not saplings. Not decorative plants. Big, decades-old trees. The kind people instinctively stand under while waiting for buses or escaping a brutal afternoon sun. Urban heat is drying the soil so aggressively that trees are struggling to pull enough moisture through their internal systems. Scientists describe it as “hydraulic failure” or “embolism” inside trees, where air bubbles interrupt water flow. In plain language? Trees are getting heat-stressed too. And weakened trees crack, uproot, or simply ...

Devyani

• 1 month ago
• 2 minutes read