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Should succcessive oaks give way: Palm trees in Miami
Photo: ddmitr / Getty Images / iStockphoto
"Party in the city where the heat is on", Will Smith sang in his hit "Miami" in the late 1990s.
But this "heat" is increasingly becoming a problem for Miami Beach.
The city popular with celebrities and tourists is struggling with the consequences of climate change.
As a countermeasure, the typical palm trees should now disappear from the cityscape.
Local authorities announced this plan last week.
The palm trees, like long white sandy beaches, are part of the cityscape of the coastal metropolis, their image adorns postcards and travel brochures.
Currently, 57 percent of all trees in Miami Beach are palm trees, as the city has calculated.
However, this is not ideal for the environment and residents.
The US state of Florida is particularly at risk from climate change because of its location by the sea.
The sea level is rising, in Miami Beach this is already leading to rising groundwater and flooding.
In addition, the city located on an island experiences the so-called »heat island« effect.
Streets and buildings store heat so that the temperature in the city is higher than in the surrounding area and it hardly cools down overnight.
The amended planting plan that the city government published last week is to be used to counter these problems.
Oak, ash, elm or sycamore maple instead of palm trees
"It has been proven that trees are one of the most effective means of mitigating the effects of climate change," says the plan's foreword.
However, palms are only suitable to a limited extent.
Instead, the city wants to focus on tree varieties such as oak, ash, elm or sycamore maple.
An oak tree, for example, has positive effects on the environment that exceed those of the palm tree by a factor of seven.
This includes filtering ozone radiation and absorbing CO₂.
In addition, palm crowns hardly provide any shade.
In order to cool the city and counteract the "heat island" effect, tree species with more deciduous and knots are therefore advantageous.
1000 palm trees are to be removed from Miami Beach in the coming weeks.
Simply cutting down all the palm trees is not the agency's plan, the city's environmental director explains to the local newspaper "Miami Herald".
Instead, they no longer want to plant new palms, but instead use other tree species.
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