Reducing ozone by planting trees

Tropospheric ozone is the EPA 'criteria pollutant' which most frequently exceeds recommended thresholds in the US. It's pretty nasty stuff, capable of doing damage to lung tissue. It's also a pollutant that's expected to increase as the climate warms. Cities can do a variety of things to limit the amount of ozone precursors that are emitted into the environment. The Atlantic's 'City Lab' documents one proposal - plant trees (lots of them, in just the right places).

Studies have shown that certain urban area-adjacent forest makeups—notably, ones in Madrid and near Mexico City—absorb enough chemicals compared to what they put out that they can improve local air quality. This is the kind of beneficial vegetation that interests Timm Kroeger, a researcher at the Nature Conservancy and lead author of a new study examining the hypothetical impact of a new, 1.5-square-mile forest on the outskirts of Houston.