2017 Timelines: TreePeople History

  • The National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council of the U.S. Forest Service awards the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative, a national partnership lead by TreePeople, to fund urban heat research. It is a ground-breaking partnership of major research institutions, which research and design the use of expanded tree canopy and other green technologies to cool our cities and protect our most vulnerable residents from the dangerous health impacts of heat-related climate change
  • TreePeople completes the LA StormCatcher Pilot Project. The project is a collaboration between LADWP, LA Bureau of Sanitation and LA County Flood Control District, facilitated by TreePeople, to explore the challenges to and benefits from increased collaborative governance of water management. The pilot installed a half-dozen cutting edge residential rainwater catchment systems, featuring cisterns equipped with cloud-based monitoring and control technology that adjusts performance in real time based on forecast precipitation — releasing or retaining water to optimize tank capacity, onsite irrigation, groundwater recharge, runoff reduction and flood mitigation. The systems have been rigorously analyzed to reveal the full potential of residential rainwater capture at the regional scale.