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Research Highlights - Urban Natural Resource Stewardship

More than 80% of the U.S. population lives in urban and suburban areas. The urban forests---street and park trees as well as landscape plantings on private lands---provide important ecosystem services to urban residents and workers. A healthy urban forest can help reduce air pollution and urban core temperatures and thus make cities more livable. Mitigation of past declines of urban forests and open space; maintenance of the health of street trees and open spaces; revitalization of neighborhoods and righting of past environmental injustices are important issues for urban forest managers.

2012 Research Highlights

From World's Largest Landfill to New York City's Newest Park

City of New York. Used with permission.

Kayakers in Fresh Kills Park, NYC.

The Fresh Kills Salt Marsh, at the southwestern corner of Staten Island in New York City, was once the world's largest landfill. Now the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation is converting the landfill into a park and a citywide cultural and recreation destination through extensive ecological restoration and landscape planning efforts. At 2,200 acres, Fresh Kills Park will be the largest park developed in New York City in more than 100 years. Forest Service researchers at the New York City Urban Field Station and throughout the NRS are working with university cooperators to explore the process of conversion and its impacts on the social and biophysical landscape. Researchers assessed Staten Island residents' attitudes toward the park, developed a communications strategy to address public health concerns about it, and used focus groups to understand residents' memories of the landfill as well as their fears and interests in using the future park. In another study, native poplar and willow plants collected from Staten Island are being propagated at the NRS Institute for Applied Ecosystem Studies in Rhinelander, WI, where they will be grown in the greenhouse and hybridized, and the most successful genotypes will be outplanted at Fresh Kills Park.

Contact

Lindsay Campbell and Erika Svendsen

Partners

Herb Schroeder (retired), NRS; David Klenosky, Purdue University; Carrie Grassi and Eloise Hirsh, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Fresh Kills Team; Phil Gleason, NYC Department of Sanitation; Christine Vogt, Michigan State University; Deborah Popper and Rich Flanagan, College of Staten Island

U.S. Urban Tree Cover Declining

Image source: Quickbird

Trees in urban areas provide numerous benefits to residents. Tree cover in urban areas is on the decline while the process of urbanization is altering regional tree cover.

Trees in urban areas provide many benefits to city residents. But Northern Research Station scientists have found that urban tree cover has been declining in recent years at a rate of about 20,000 acres per year or about 4.0 million trees per year. Recent analyses by NRS scientists reveal that many forces such as urban development, insects and diseases, natural regeneration, and tree planting are constantly changing the urban tree cover, both positively and negatively. Although tree cover is declining within most urban areas, the development of some urban areas can increase regional tree cover, especially in grassland-dominated states. Understanding these changes is leading to better management plans for sustaining tree cover and its associated benefits for current and future generations.

Contact

David Nowak

Partners

U.S. Forest Service: RPA Assessment Staff and State and Private Forestry Urban and Community Forestry Program; SUNY; National Science Foundation

More Information

Nowak, David J.; Greenfield, Eric J. 2012. Tree and impervious cover change in U.S. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. 11(1): 21-30.

Nowak, David J.; Greenfield, Eric J. 2012. Tree and impervious cover in the United States. Landscape and Urban Planning. 107: 21-30.

News Release: Nation's urban forests losing ground: New Orleans, Albuquerque, Houston losing trees

More Trees Associated with Less Crime in Greater Baltimore

Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun

Morgan Grove, NRS scientist, speaks with Barbara Rock, a longtime resident of Franklin Square, Baltimore, about the results of his research during a tour with Baltimore Sun.

Northern Research Station scientists found a strong inverse relationship between tree canopy and crimes of robbery, burglary, theft, and shooting when they compared high-resolution tree canopy data and geocoded crime point data in the Baltimore region. These findings add to the literature on the relationship between crime and vegetation in a number of ways. First, the findings show that where there are more trees there is less crime. Second, this result holds for both public and private land, but it is stronger for public land. Third, when spatial autocorrelation is adjusted for, the overall result still holds, but the magnitude is not as great. Finally, it appears there is some slight geographic variability in the relationships between trees and crime and that a few isolated areas see a positive relationship between trees and crime. The modeling results indicated conservatively that a 10 percent increase in tree canopy was associated with a roughly 12 percent decrease in crime.

Contact

Morgan Grove

Partners

Austin Troy, University of Vermont

More Information

Troy, Austin; Grove, J. Morgan; O'Neill-Dunne, Jarlath. 2012. The relationship between tree canopy and crime rates across an urban-rural gradient in the greater Baltimore region. Landscape and Urban Planning. 106: 262-270.

Understanding Urban Civil Environmental Action Across the U.S.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Gathering prairie seed is an easy, educational, and fun stewardship activity in the Chicago region. Stewards can be any age.

Visualizing where and how hundreds of civic environmental stewardships groups are working in cities across the United States has gotten easier for the public, municipal agencies, and nonprofits, thanks to the continued work of the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP). STEW-MAP, developed by scientists from the Northern Research Station, supports urban natural resource management, policymaking, and public outreach with databases and interactive maps. This year, the STEW-MAP team continued to expand the project's geographic reach as well as its products and platforms. The team has launched a new multi-city online portal (http://stewmap.net/), which provides information about STEW-MAP projects in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, and Seattle, including maps, network diagrams, and publications to date.

Contact

Erika Svendsen and Lindsay Campbell

Partners

Dale Blahna, Kathy Wolf, PNWRS; Dana Fisher, University of Maryland; James Connolly, Northeastern University; Dexter Locke, NRS/New York City Department of Parks and Recreation; Steve Romalewski and Christy Spielman, CUNY Center for Urban Research; Oliver Bazinet, University of Washington; Mark Bouman, Field Museum

More Information

Fisher, Dana R.; Campbell, Lindsay; Svendsen, Erika S. 2012. The organisational structure of urban environmental stewardship. Environmental Politics. 21(1): 26-48.

Connolly, James J.; Svendsen, Erika S.; Fisher, Dana R.; Campbell, Lindsay K. 2013. Organizing urban ecosystem services through environmental stewardship governance in New York City. Landscape and Urban Planning. 109: 76-84.

2011 Research Highlights

Culturally Appropriate Conservation Education for the Hmong American Community

Forest Service researchers produced a conservation education DVD in partnership with the Hmong community titled “The Wildlife and Wilderness Exploration Show.” The DVD puts a modern twist on traditional Hmong storytelling, delivering key messages in entertaining and educational segments covering a wide range of topics. The educational messages were identified through interviews with Hmong natural resource professionals across the US.

Street-Level Views of Climate Change

Forest Service researchers and partners interviewed residents of two Chicago neighborhoods about their awareness of climate change and their own climate-friendly behaviors. They found that residents have varying levels of knowledge about climate change and identified many opportunities to simultaneously meet neighborhood goals and mitigate the impacts of climate change. The findings will help the City of Chicago shape its Climate Action Plan outreach to residents and the lessons learned are applicable in other places as well.

Five Years after the Fire, Effects on Community Still Linger

Persistant long-term effects of wildfire can limit community recovery years later

Organizations helping communities recover from the effects of wildfire need to understand the issues and conditions that are likely to persist even years later. In this study of communities affected by the Rodeo-Chediski fire five years after the event, Forest Service scientists and their university colleagues found that although the community took some positive actions in response to the fire, other negative impacts persist.

Non-native Forest Pathogens Cost Homeowners Millions of Dollars Annually

Two big killers of residential trees--the oak wilt pathogen in the East and the sudden oak death (SOD) pathogen in the West cost homeowners millions of dollars annually. Millions are spent to treat, remove, and replant oak trees and millions are lost in property value where ever these diseases have spread. Forest Service researchers calculated economic costs and losses to homeowners and communities and found that programs to slow the spread of forest diseases such as oak wilt and sudden oak death provide important benefits, in terms of reduced expenditures and losses, to both homeowners and communities.

2010 Research Highlights

Urban and community forest summaries for the lower 48 States

NRS scientist David Nowak and others have recently published several important summaries of tree and forest information. The first is a summary and comparison of urban tree cover and its associated benefits in the lower 48 United States, Sustaining America’s Urban Trees and Forests (GTR-NRS-62). The second is a compilation of tree and impervious cover data and population statistics for each of the lower 48 United States (in seven publications, GTR-NRS- 38, 47, 50, 54, 56, 58, & 59) using National Land Cover Data (NLCD) and U.S. Census data.

Fungicide treatment alters wood anatomy and suppresses oak wilt

Oak wilt, a devastating fungal disease of mature trees in rural and urban forests of the eastern and southern U.S., is spread by insects that visit tree wounds (including pruning cuts) and also travels through natural root system grafts. Injection of the fungicide propiconazole in the root flares has been standard commercial practice by arborists, who have found that retreatment is necessary after several years. NRS scientist Jennifer Juzwik, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and a commercial arboriculture company, found that injected propiconazole in the tree roots and lower stem degraded below levels required to stop the disease fungus after two years.

Models for ecological restoration in urban areas: Lessons from the USA and Europe

Ecological restoration often aims to recreate so-called pre-settlement conditions, but this can be problematic in urban areas where human activities have erased most traces of pre-settlement conditions. NRS researchers Paul Gobster and Lynne Westphal and a German colleague, Matthias Gross, analyzed urban restoration projects and developed several alternative models that articulate the various possible types of restoration projects.

Perceptions of crime and its impacts on the use of urban parks by Latino residents

Perceived safety has long been known to play an important role in people’s use of urban parks, but little is known about how the everyday leisure behavior of neighborhood residents is altered by the presence of gang activity. NRS scientist Paul Gobster examined how the perceptions of Latino residents in two inner- city Chicago neighborhoods affected their use of outdoor recreation environments and how they responded.

2009 Research Highlights

Restorative Commons

The Northern Research Station (NRS) published the proceedings of a conference titled Restorative Commons: Creating Health and Well-being through Urban Landscapes. Participants at the 2007 conference shared lessons learned from the fields of urban natural resource management and design with other practitioners, policymakers, and the general public.

Urban tree canopy: The development of prioritization tools

Scientists from the Northern Research Station, the University of Vermont (UVM) Spatial Analysis Laboratory, and other partners have developed tools for the high resolution assessment of urban landcover. These tools have been applied to a range of cities, including Burlington, VT; Boston, MA; New York City; and Baltimore and Cumberland, MD. Based upon these assessments, these cities have established urban tree canopy (UTC) goals and allocated resources to meet these goals.

Protecting habitat for grassland birds also improves life for people

More than 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, and these areas are experiencing rapid growth and largescale development of open space. Many residents are concerned about the loss of open spaces and the amenities they provide, and many local organizations, including local governments, have policies and funds to acquire land or conservation easements within or on the fringe of metropolitan areas.

Listening to neglected voices

Natural resource managers need to understand the cultures and concerns of ethnic minority communities to serve them effectively. The Hmong people from Southeast Asia came to the U.S. as refugees after the Vietnam War.

Tree biology education for landscape professionals

Urban and community forests need arborists and other landscape professionals who understand the relationship of tree biology and the environment.

2008 Research Highlights

Fight crime: Plant a tree

Trees and green space have always been prized in urban settings for their aesthetic value. But their stock might go up after a recent study suggests vegetation management might also affect crime rates.

2007 Research Highlights

Tree software benefits cities and their trees

NRS staff completed analyses of urban forest structure and ecosystem services and their values for seven U.S. cities and four cities in Italy. Using the Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) model, these cities were able to quantify the value of their existing forest cover and identify the potential for increasing canopy cover and value to the city.

Living Memorials Project honored

The NRS’s Living Memorials Project received top honors from the Environmental Design Research Foundation and Places Journal and from the Voices of September 11th organization this year for its documentation of the spaces people create or use as they shape the landscape to memorialize individuals, places, and events.

Wildland-urban interface maps aid fire planning

The 2007 southern California wildfires generated demand for the detailed maps of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) generated by NRS scientists and collaborators. California land managers and policymakers used the spatial detail of the maps in their efforts to protect 5.1 million WUI housing units (the nation’s highest number).