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Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here, and today I have a treat for you.

We are going to a microforest.

If you've never heard of one, they are small, they are lush, and unlike natural forests,

micro forests are designed entirely by humans for urban environments. And producer Rachel Carlson

went to visit one in Los Angeles recently. Hey, Rachel. I did. Hey, it was amazing. I had the most fun day ever. I hung out with

two scientists who've dedicated themselves to planting these tiny forests to cool down cities and

make them more resilient to climate change. Okay, where did you go to see a microforest?

Ascot Hills Park, which is a park in northeast Los Angeles. It's surrounded by

freeways and interstates. It's not too far from the heart of downtown L.A. So it's not really an area

that I typically associate with lots of green space. But you pull off the freeway and drive this

way and you see a green stamp of 10,000 square feet. And that's exactly what

it looked like a green stamp. That's Damien Willett, an associate professor of biology at Loyola

Marymount University. He's one of the scientists I met with who's worked on planting and maintaining

this microforest for the last two years. Okay, but what makes a microforest a forest? In a forest, the canopies of the trees

touch one another. Well, you plant one tree, that's just a tree, but once you start having the

canopy connect, that starts to be what we imagine as a forest where we have this kind of blockage

of the sunlight, but also a forest has layers. Canopies of trees with layers of plants beneath

them. So in that way, a microforest

does simulate a natural forest. Okay. But what makes a micro forest micro? It's smaller?

Yeah. Oh. So this is not like a fairy forest with tiny plants or something. This is just a forest

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