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The Miami Heat did not get their name from nowhere. But lately, that heat is starting to feel unbearable, as South Florida is hit by repeated heat advisories with few days of relief.

Study after study shows that South Florida is in the coming years due to climate change, and it's become a top priority of the administration of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to try to do something about it.

The county was the first in the nation to create the role of a Chief Heat Officer to coordinate efforts to combat extreme heat. An official "" has been declared from May through October. Public facilities are being opened to the public as "" during extreme heat incidents.

In many ways, the main pillar of the effort to combat extreme heat is an ambitious goal of covering 30% of the surface area of the county with tree canopy, since that canopy significantly reduces surface temperatures.

READ MORE: As extreme temperatures persist in South Florida, so do threats of heat-related illness

Technically, that has been the goal of the county government since 2006, a year after Hurricane Wilma and Hurricane Katrina devastated the existing tree canopy in the county.

But now for the first time, the county has rolled out a comprehensive that will tackle these efforts across departments and across the county.

The draft plan is . After that, the plan will be finalized.

¸Û°ÄÌìϲÊrecently spoke with Chief Heat Officer Jane Gilbert about the plan and what it means for the future of the county. "We need to start treating trees as the critical infrastructure that they are," she said.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

WLRN: Why is it important for the county to make progress in planting more trees and having more percentage of more areas covered with tree canopy?

Gilbert: There are multiple reasons for both preserving and enhancing our tree canopy, especially in the areas where we currently have very low tree canopy or less than 20%.

My initial purpose is around mitigating urban heat islands. We know the areas with low tree canopy and higher land surface temperatures are also the areas where we have very high rates of heat related emergency department visits and hospitalizations to the tune of four times the rates of zip codes with high tree canopy.

So that's the first reason — is mitigating our urban heat islands.

We know that trees are the greatest tool we have for keeping Miami-Dade cool. And if we do achieve our goals, we could actually maintain our current overall temperatures into the mid century, which is remarkable. That's new research that's been coming out, but it's really remarkable what we can do with trees.

But the benefits of trees go far beyond just heat mitigation. They are great defenses for absorbing stormwater and making us more flood resilient. They filter that stormwater to protect our bay and the quality of our water. They provide habitat to birds and all sorts of animals, they beautify a neighborhood and increase property values and improve air quality. So there are many reasons that we want to double down on planting more trees.

Matias J. Ocner

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Miami Herald

In this draft plan, it identifies 15 areas that have been identified as needing more help than others — 15 census areas. Where are those areas?

They're in Hialeah, Miami Gardens, Brownsville, some parts of South Dade.

Those are areas that have historically had very low tree canopy and generally higher than average poverty rates. And so we're also doing this to lower the social determinants of health in those areas.

Some areas like Hialeah, Doral and Medley are areas with a lot of warehouses, a lot of industries. What are the obstacles you're looking at when it comes to planting more shade trees in those very industrialized areas?

The industrialized [areas] are definitely a challenge. However, certain areas in Doral that are very heavy with warehouses have started to plant more trees and, see the benefits of that. Some of the areas are neighborhoods, single family neighborhoods. But they're small lots with not as much right away necessarily, so it will be challenging to site trees in these areas.

Luckily, the county was able to from the U. S. Forest Service for planting street trees in these neighborhoods. We are hiring up now outreach staff to help, because it's going to take that kind of direct outreach to property owners to make sure people are on board with having the right trees in the right place and will support those trees going forward.

Since 2006 when these efforts started, there has been progress. Just after Hurricanes Wilma and Katrina, the tree canopy cover was about 12%. But over the last couple years, as a recent report showed, the progress has kind of flatlined around 20%. Do we understand the reasons for why it has plateaued there?

So while it's plateaued overall in the county, there are certain areas that have lost tree canopy and other areas that have gained in our assessments.

We lost a lot of trees from Hurricane Irma in 2017. That's one of the reasons we've continued to have very rapid growth and development. We lose trees with some of that. We also had some weakening of state laws that are around allowing property owners — if their trees present a risk to health and safety to property or people — they can take down a tree without any consequence.

All of those have contributed to loss. What's positive is that we didn't lose canopy overall. So certainly some of our efforts have at least helped us to maintain what we also know through the assessment is that we have a lot of areas. with strong potential for tree planting.

And this is really where not only county lands, but our partnership with schools, with the faith based community — these will really help us to leverage those areas with the most potential for tree planting.

Planting trees is one thing. But arguably a more important part is maintaining the trees. How does this plan address the maintenance part of it?

We need to start treating trees as the critical infrastructure that they are. We began inventorying our trees last year, we've now inventoried 350,000 trees in our parks, we're now going out to bid for additional inventorying services — that's the first step towards really being able to track which trees need maintenance the most.

Also, our mayor and the commission have increased our budget the last couple of years significantly. When the mayor first started, out of the General Fund we were investing $1 million towards street tree planting and none towards maintenance. In the last two years that's been upped to $4 million with a mix of planting and maintenance — we've done a lot of catch up on our deferred maintenance of trees in the last couple of years.

That's things like pruning and trimming and fertiziling?

Primarily that's pruning and trimming where needed to make sure they're healthy and will not fall down in the middle of our hurricane season.

A major part of the plan that's underscored is training what the county calls 'volunteer community forest ambassadors.' What role is envisioned for volunteers and the general community in this?

I'm super excited about our tree ambassador program.

We're gonna be partnering with community-based organizations in identifying leaders from the 15 census places we talked about — to be trained up on tree protection policies; how to identify where trees can be plated with the right tree in the right place.

They'll help us organize community meetings to educate their neighbors about what they can do to advance their neighborhoods through more tree planting. And to help with partnerships through local schools in their neighborhood and faith-based organizations.

The County hopes to buy some private land with forests on them to preserve them through the Environmentally Endangered Lands program. How important is protecting the pockets of urban forests that exist now, and how does that figure into the overall plan?

We have a very unique native ecosystem here called pine rocklands that doesn't exist except for in two other places in the Caribbean in the world, and we've lost a lot of that habitat.

One of the Key goals that we're going to be implementing very soon is to identify the areas with pine rocklands that are left, particularly in our areas that need canopy the most. Because individual trees provide cooling benefits, but whole forests provide a whole 'nother level of cooling. Cooling, flood management, habitat preservation, etcetera.

So we will look at identifying those lands that are most opportune for preserving and restoring pine rocklands. We really need to be looking to build voter support for a new level of work towards preserving environmentally endangered lands.

The draft plan says that some areas are filled with too many, what it calls, low performing trees, like palm trees that might look nice — they very much match the marketing of South Florida — but the argument is that they might be providing too little shade for what we really need. Should we expect fewer palm trees in the future down here?

I think palm trees are great accents to a planting plan, but should not form your anchor in tree planting. So absolutely we'll still have palm trees. We are in part identified with our palm trees, but we want to make sure we have trees that will provide that full canopy and stormwater absorption as well.

Do you expect pushback from that, or have you heard feedback from the community on that?

The only feedback I've seen so far from our plan is more shade trees, less palm trees.

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