Role of Vegetation in Mitigating Air Emissions Across Industrial Sites in the US

Despite wide adoption of pollution control technologies, industrial facilities emit about half the criteria air pollutants in the U.S. and contribute to poor air quality in many regions. Vegetation such as trees, shrubs, and grasses also have the capacity to directly remove air pollution. This work assesses the role of vegetation, particularly trees, in mitigating air emissions near point sources at nearly 20,000 sites across the U.S. Additional mitigation capacity due to ecological restoration to the average local vegetation is also determined. Comparing emissions with the average uptake capacity at each site indicates that currently most sites in the Southeastern part of the U.S. have enough vegetation cover to offset most emissions while industrial facilities, particularly those in the Western part of the country can benefit the most from restoration. A relatively large fraction of sites in the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction, transportation and warehousing, and management of companies and enterprises sectors have enough current or restored capacity to mitigate their emissions. Land around facilities in the finance and insurance, real estate, and retail and leasing sectors lacks much capacity. Such results encourage further work toward sustainable engineering by seeking synergies between industrial and ecological systems.