The Brief

On a recent spring morning in Pacific Palisades, the clanging and hammering of construction filled the air. A small group of people gathered under a partially burnt Brisbane box tree shading the sidewalk on a street near the center of town.

The group took measurements — the leafiness of its crown, the width of its trunk. They inspected its bark for fungus and noted any new growth sprouting.

For more than a year, a group of researchers and students from UCLA, UC Davis, University of Florida and the U.S. Forest Service, alongside local volunteers and students, have collected data on more than 2,000 trees — about 600 in the Palisades and 1,500 in Altadena — to analyze how they may recover after the fires and their role in the fires’ spread.

The question about the fires' spread is key as California debates new regulations, called Zone Zero, near homes in high-risk fire areas. Their ongoing research is showing that in some cases, well-maintained vegetation may actually help buildings survive a fire.

The data will be some of the most extensive ever gathered to understand how the urban tree canopy fares in the face of increasingly catastrophic fires in an era of human-caused climate change.

Monitoring the health of post-fire trees

The team of researchers has been collecting data on trees in the Eaton and Palisades burn scars since just a few days after the fires started last year.

They’ve primarily focused on trees in the public right-of-way in areas with the highest number of tree species — that way they’ll be able to compare their data with tree canopy data from before the fires. The researchers have used in-person monitoring and remote sensing to survey the areas. A team from UC Davis has been collecting data using LiDAR.

“The purpose of our work is essentially to see how the trees have done,” said Edith de Guzman,  a cooperative extension specialist with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. “We want to understand how different species or different tree types fare.  And another aspect of the study is around flammability of trees and essentially doing a little bit of forensic work to understand what burnt what.”

Edith de Guzman (left) assists an undergraduate student measuring a fire-scarred tree in Pacific Palisades.

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The group stops at a jacaranda tree a little further up the street from the Brisbane box. Part of the crown is blooming purple, but fungus grows on its trunk.

“It's flowering, which is good. It's demonstrating that it still has enough energy to do that,” de Guzman said. “But we really don't see any growth that's happening from the fine branches and fine twigs at the end. So this tree's not doing super well.”

The bark is blackened on the side of the trunk closer to where a house once stood. The bark on the street side is lighter — some sprouts reach out from the trunk.

It’s a common pattern, de Guzman said.

“ The pattern that we see again and again is that the tree caught fire from the structure rather than the other way around,” she said.

Though they’ve only done preliminary analysis, de Guzman said that so far, they’re finding mature trees, no matter the species, tended to survive the flames better. And that most of the surviving trees they’ve surveyed actually grew in the last year.

“We are seeing that by and large, many trees are coming back and we just need to give them a chance,” said de Guzman. “They might be a little unsightly, they might not look exactly like they did before the fires, but they want to live, most of them. And we have quite a lot of species, both native and non-native, that are coming back.”

What the research says so far

Most research on wildfires, tree canopy and fire spread has come from rural, forested areas, said Francisco Escobedo, a research scientist with the Forest Service who has studied the issue for more than six years in areas such as Santa Rosa and Paradise.

“When we have these urbanized, highly populated, densely built environments that are affected by fire, we know very little about what happens to trees,” Escobedo said. “A lot of these trees, unlike the trees we have in our surrounding forests, didn't evolve with fires. What happens to jacarandas, what happens to magnolias, what happens to coast live oaks in urban environments?”

A tree in Pacific Palisades that appears to have suffered the most on the side where a house once stood.

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His research in more urban areas affected by fire is painting an increasingly nuanced picture. One recent study remotely measured some 16,000 buildings, as well as surrounding vegetation moisture, in Paradise in Northern California after the 2018 Camp Fire and Ventura after the 2017 Thomas fire. They found that drier vegetation near buildings in both areas was associated with building loss. But in Ventura, buildings near trees that were not water-stressed actually had a better chance of survival.

“ So the greener the trees were, the higher the influence of that vegetation on the building surviving,” Escobedo said.

The reasoning is still being parsed out, but Escobedo said they suspect it’s in part due to variations in types of vegetation and how the fires spread in each area. In both areas, embers largely drove building-to-building fire spread, though the intensity of the fire front and the nature of the vegetation were different — largely conifer forest up north, versus chaparral, shrub greenery here in Southern California.

While houses burned around them, many trees were able to withstand the flames, as shown by this aerial view of Altadena from June 2025.

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Escobedo says that’s why hardening homes and location-specific vegetation recommendations are key, rather than blanket policy recommendations. He added that the latest iteration of Zone Zero proposed regulations embraces more of this nuance.

“These neighborhoods are just very different from wildland conditions,” Escobedo said. “This home ignition zone, defensible space buffer concept we have was developed in wildland areas.”

“ If vegetation gets dry enough, hot enough, it's going to burn,” he added. “From what we've learned with home-hardening practices, there are things you can do to your home to reduce that ignitability. So what we think our research might be leading to is that there are things you can do with your vegetation to reduce that probability of ignition.”

Another aspect of the research will focus on how different species of trees responded to the fires, which will provide another helpful data point for policies and insurance protections, said Alessandro Ossola, an associate professor in urban plant science at UC Davis, who has led the LiDAR sensing aspect of the data collection.

“ We can plant, strategically, trees of the right species to withstand climate change but still provide benefits to the community and people that need trees so much,” he said.

Many trees in burn scar areas are resprouting in unusual ways, like this one in Pacific Palisades. The odd growth patterns can be a sign of stress and recovery.

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A symbol of resilience, data to inform policy

The researchers also hope their work will inform better protections for urban forests before and after future fires. For many survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires, the loss of their neighborhood trees since debris removal and, lately, ongoing construction has been yet another gut punch on top of the loss of their communities.

Already about 20% of their survey trees have been cut down since last year’s fires, de Guzman said. And as summer heat arrives, many of the remaining surviving trees will need help to make it through.

“What we're seeing is that removals are happening illegally,” she said. “ There are removals that are happening potentially by developers or their contractors despite the fact that the tree is not a high-risk tree and despite the fact that the tree is trying to bounce back.

“ So a lot of the trees should just be monitored at this point, not removed.”

Another recent Forest Service study found that the urban tree canopy recovered to pre-fire levels in Ventura and Santa Rosa within five years. However, the forest canopy declined overall in forested areas near Paradise — another indication of how different ecosystems respond in different ways to fire.

UCLA graduate student Matthew Murphy measures growth on the crown of a tree.

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“How can we ensure that we can continue to live with nature in ways that are protective, both of our built environment and of the softer, greener things that make it livable and inviting?” said de Guzman.

While many questions remain, in many ways, the research is not just rooted in the physical realm, she said.

“These trees were witnesses to an inferno — some firefighters tell that temperatures reached 2,000 degrees and more — and yet here they are,” de Guzman said. “These neighborhoods are going to change completely. … But we have an opportunity to maintain some of the witnesses that are here to tell the story of the before times.”

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.

Stereotypes die hard. Los Angeles actually has a massive public transport system serving the region, which boasts the world's longest light rail line in the form of the 58-mile long Line A (or for old-timers, the Blue line) and tons of buses.

But if you opt to engage in the gladiator sport that is L.A. driving — a reminder you're going to need to park that thing too.

Here's where we come in.

Curb parking

No surprise, our curbs are painted in different colors with different restrictions.

Heads up: Red, White and Blue curb regulations are in effect 24/7, unless otherwise noted. And additional restrictions could apply if posted on a sign, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

Red Curbs — Nope

• No stopping, parking or standing 
• Doesn't matter if there's a driver or passenger inside the car

Yellow Curbs — Depends

• For commercial loading only
• Vehicles with a commercial license plate can park here, but only if they are actively loading or unloading stuff, for a maximum of 30 minutes
• Restrictions are in effect Monday through Saturday 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. unless otherwise posted on signs
  
  • That means you can park in yellow zones after 6:00 p.m. with no restrictions, unless otherwise noted
• Vehicles without a commercial license plate may load and unload passengers or baggage, for a maximum of 5 minutes

White Curbs — You gotta get going fast

• Passenger loading only for a maximum of 5 minutes

Blue Curbs (Accessible Parking Zones) — If you have the placard

Those famous 'clashing' L.A. parking signs

Before we move on to other facets of parking in Los Angeles. We want to take a moment to address a persistent complaint about confusing parking signs that are often clustered together.

When you encounter this phenomenon, we suggest patience. You don't need a degree in math, probably just a pen and paper.

For the sign in the video, here's when you can and cannot park (we think):

• No parking on Mondays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. because of street cleaning
  
  • all other days you can park between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., but please be aware there's a 2 hour parking limit
• Every night, you can stop your vehicle for 10 minutes only for passenger loading between 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
  
  • If the curb is not white, then you can park outside of the 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. window without that restriction
• You can park for 2 hours:
  
  • Between Tuesdays and Saturdays between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
  • But remember on Mondays, parking is prohibited from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. because of street cleaning
  • On Sunday, you can park for 2 hours between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Heads up: When in doubt, find somewhere else to park.

Meter parking

LADOT says it operates some 38,000 parking meters in the city. Sometimes it feels as if there are as many meter enforcement people out there.

There are different ways to pay — coins, credit cards, and via text or an app at a number of meters.

Heads up: If a meter is broken, meaning it cannot accept coins or a credit card, then you can only park for free up to the posted time limit.

Other no-no's

Here are several other no parking rules, pulled from this list from LADOT

• In alleys, except for to unload things or passengers
• Within 15 feet of a fire station driveway or fire hydrant
• No double parking
• In a center median strip, unless signs indicate otherwise

Parking on a federal holiday

Certain city parking regulations are not enforced on national holidays. They are enforced on state holidays.

• Time Limit
• Parking meters
• No Parking with specified days and times only
• No stopping with specified days and times only
• Street sweeping (also not enforced the day after Thanksgiving and after Farmworkers Day)

If a national holiday falls on a Saturday it will be observed by the city on a Friday. If it falls on a Sunday it will be observed by the city on a Monday. Parking restrictions are not enforced on both the holiday and the observed holiday.