State Funding 40-50 New Trees for NJIT Campus to Help the Environment

New state funding and student research will help nurture the 300 trees, and add many more, that live on and around New Jersey Institute of Technology’s campus in downtown Newark.

The trees provide shade and beauty, while absorbing 30 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually and producing about 75% of that amount in oxygen, said Gareth Russell, associate professor of biological sciences and co-director of the Urban Ecology Lab — but the 13 current species are not necessarily the right trees for our needs, and many of them are not yet mature, he explained.

“Unfortunately, more than half of our trees are ornamental species from elsewhere in the world: Japanese zelkova, ginkgo and Callery pear are the most common. These species are commonly planted in urban areas because they are robust to the challenging conditions. The downside is that they don’t host any native wildlife [and] Callery pear is considered an invasive pest: it can spread into local forests,” Russell stated. “Recent campus plantings have included more native species, such as pin oaks, which host a lot of biodiversity, and we hope this trend continues so that we can experience more nature on campus.”

Healthy trees also decrease the local heat island -- a term that refers to a regional average temperature increase when there's too much blacktop and too little greenery.

Russell’s student Hanyu Wang studied 254 trees inside the NJIT campus perimeter, resulting in his spring 2023 master’s thesis, “The evaluation of carbon benefits produced by urban street trees.”

“We have some large native trees that are both beautiful and great for wildlife. There are honey locusts, various maples, and the biggest tree on campus, the pin oak in front of Eberhardt Hall overlooking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. And the truth is that mature trees like these provide most of the benefits on campus,” Russell said. “Hanyu determined that the eight largest trees store the same proportion of carbon as the smallest 180 trees, and the fifteen largest absorb as much carbon dioxide as the smallest 100.”

Now, NJIT has received a $188,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, awarded through The College of New Jersey’s Sustainability Institute. Campus planners, led by Prabhakar Shrestha, assistant director of sustainability, will use the funds to hire an urban forester or landscape architect, excavate some of the older or inappropriate trees, prepare the land and plant 40-50 new ones. The bulk of the work will happen in 2024 and will include student volunteers from the NJIT Green club. One place where students will notice entirely new planting is on the island between Central and Sussex avenues.

“That sounds good,” said Derick Aguirre, a sophomore from Plainfield. “I feel as an architecture major, it’s important to have more trees and plants … it’s something that we all look out for.”

Aguirre said that he studied the effect of wind on vegetation and plants last semester, in a studio course with Adjunct Instructor Luke Petrocelli.

Russell is most excited by the upcoming work. “Trees bring a multitude of benefits, especially in an urban environment. They absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. They clean pollutants out of the air, shade the ground and thus cool the atmosphere. They look beautiful and host wildlife if they are native, and exposure to all this has been shown in numerous scientific studies to reduce stress and improve both mental and physical health. Given that big trees do all this far better than small trees, the key is not just to plant trees, but to nurture them and let them grow.”

Additional state funds of $100,000 went to Rutgers University/Newark, adjacent to NJIT. Click here for full details of the state funding.