Engaging a diversity of citizen scientists around urban trees in greater Los Angeles

Cities are growing and changing with climate change, increasing human population density, emerging diseases, pests, and health concerns. How can we engage a diversity of people to study how designing nature back into cities... [ view full abstract ]

Cities are growing and changing with climate change, increasing human population density, emerging diseases, pests, and health concerns. How can we engage a diversity of people to study how designing nature back into cities can create a more livable urban environment for all?

Within a large urbanized region such as Los Angeles, the impact of climate change and the urban heat island can vary substantially and underserved communities are often the hardest hit. Trees reduce temperature by shading the ground and buildings beneath them and via evapotranspiration from leaves. One promising area of research is to understand the link between urban cooling benefits to tree patterns including tree growth and diversity of leaf traits including nitrogen content and the ratio between size and weight. Aerial imagery collected by NASA is providing information about ground temperature and vegetation cover, but on the ground collection of tree species, size and leaf chemistry is essential to ground truthing the models and developing guidelines about which trees to plant to optimize ecosystem services provided to neighboring communities. .

To understand the variability across greater Los Angeles in tree cover, a coalition of willing partners worked together to engage a diversity of citizen scientists to collect the data within a narrow time frame. This network of diverse partners successfully leveraged their membership base of diverse individuals to collect information from Reseda to the San Gabriel Valley. participants included high school students, boy scouts, and corporate employees in disadvantaged towns in the San Gabriel Valley led by AMigos de los Rios. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and TreePeople reached out to the respective member bases to recruit participants in parks in LA, and their families from Heschel Day School collected data in Reseda. Networks of citizen science can be mobilized to great effect.