Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Again, the shade of trees protects the earth from the direct rays of
the sun, and prevents solar irradiation from the earth. This effect is
of immense importance in cities where the paved streets become
excessively heated, and radiation creates one of the most dangerous
sources of heat. Whoever has walked in the streets of New York, on a
hot summer's day, protected from the direct rays of a midday sun by
his umbrella, has found the reflected heat of the pavement
intolerable. If for a moment he passed into the dense shade of a tree,
he at once experienced a marked sense of relief. This relief is not
due so much to the shade as to the cooling effect of the vaporization
from the leaves of the tree.
Trees also have a cutaneous transpiration by their leaves. And
although they absorb largely the vapor of the surrounding air, and
also the water of the soil, they nevertheless exhale constantly large
volumes into the air. This vaporization of liquids is a frigorific or
cooling process, and when most rapid the frigorific effect reaches its
maximum. The amount of fluid exhaled by vegetation has been, at
various times, estimated with more or less accuracy. Hales[4] states
that a sunflower, with a surface of 5.616 square inches, throws off at
the rate of twenty to twenty-four ounces avoirdupois every twelve
hours; a vine, with twelve square feet of foliage, exhales at the rate
of five or six ounces daily. Bishop Watson, in his experiments on
grasses, estimated that an acre of grass emits into the atmosphere
6.400 quarts of water in twenty-four hours.
It is evident, therefore, that vegetation tends powerfully to cool the
atmosphere during a summer day, and this effect increases in
proportion to the increase of the temperature. The influence of trees
heavily leaved, in a district where there is no other vegetation, in
moderating and equalizing the temperature, can not be overestimated.
The amount of superficial surface exposed by the foliage of a single
tree is immense. For example, "the Washington elm, of Cambridge,
Mass., a tree of moderate size, was estimated several years since to
produce a crop of seven million leaves, exposing a surface of two
hundred thousand square feet, or about five acres of foliage."
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