Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 48(2): March 2022 and documents to investigate changes in Oakland, California’s urban forest canopy cover beginning in 1850 and found drivers, including earthquakes, the Gold Rush, fires, urbanization, afforestation, and trends in favored species, that impacted the urban forest as they occurred but also left legacy effects evident during the study period 140 years later. McPherson and Luttinger (1998) combined analysis of historical documents with interviews of local residents to inves- tigate natural and social forces driving changes in Sacramento’s urban forest, finding urban forest man- agement and public investment in the urban forest to be instrumental in the city’s afforestation and also in response to challenges such as Dutch elm disease. Roman et al. (2018) called for interdisciplinary approaches that consider the role of history in shaping institutions and patterns of urban forest conditions, stating, “historical processes must be considered…to explain how urban forest structure and spatial patterns emerged within a given city, or across multiple cities.” Roman et al. (2017) explored canopy cover change over time on the University of Pennsylvania’s Phila- delphia campus by reviewing historical documents and quantifying canopy cover from aerial imagery, finding that institutional support and intentional landscape planning is needed for increasing canopy cover, but that change needs to be framed over a period of genera- tions rather than years due to the slow nature of tree and forest growth. Johnson et al. (2020) examined urban forested patches from a historical perspective, citing the influ- ences of past land use and planning decisions as important in their effects, direct and indirect, on current forest patches. The authors emphasize the need to ana- lyze urban forested patches from a socio-ecological perspective and offer a conceptual model for applica- tion in future research. Additionally, they offer a list of research questions that are yet uninvestigated or have been explored minimally. These questions weave together concepts of change over time, future chal- lenges such as environmental change, socio-ecological drivers of patch condition and sustainability, gover- nance and management, and residents’ interactions with and valuing of urban forested patches. For our case study, we seek to address the research gap delineated above—that little historical analysis of urban forests has been done at the patch level and that any analysis done should be approached from a social-ecological systems perspective. For this reason, 75 this case study examines the history of the designa- tion and protection of forested and other green patches on Indiana University’s Bloomington (IUB) campus from 1884 to present. We identify patterns in patch sustainability, reviewing patches that have been sus- tained, added, or recognized throughout the growth of the IUB campus, as well as patches that have been removed because of campus development projects. Additionally, we are interested in situating natural patches within the social-ecological sphere in which they interact with biophysical and social/institutional conditions. Finally, we investigate whether some nat- ural patches can be considered a Commons, or a shared resource governed and potentially protected by for- mal and informal rule processes. Our investigation relates closely to a knowledge gap cited by Johnson et al. (2020), “How do differing stewardship, manage- ment, and governance impact the condition of urban forest patches?” and takes the concept into further depth by viewing the problem from a historical perspective. With this work, a major goal has been to develop a case study methodology for studying historical, social, and ecological conditions related to forested patches in a campus setting that can be applied to the study of forested patches in more complex urban areas. This methodology can then be used to answer research questions related to the social and ecological drivers impacting past, present, and future sustainability of urban forested patches. We are adapting work done here for our current study of forested patches in the city of Bloomington as a whole. Urban and University Forests: Sustainability, Resilience, and Institutional Planning Grove et al. (2015) discussed 3 major criteria that serve to define and specify urban patches: physical (human-built or natural abiotic), biological, and social factors. Additionally, they acknowledged the importance of historical and temporal factors in deter- mining ecological outcomes, because flow of genetic material, pollutants, etc. occurs between patches in urban settings, and because historic conditions impact, for example, vegetation present in a location. The definition of an urban patch broadly applies to a focal area of a setting where humans and the biophys- ical world interact (Grove et al. 2015) and is inclusive of university campus settings. Presence and density of forest cover is one variable that can be considered ©2022 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2022
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