292 Roman et al: Common Practices and Challenges for Urban Tree Monitoring Programs Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2013. 39(6): 292–299 Identifying Common Practices and Challenges for Local Urban Tree Monitoring Programs Across the United States Lara A. Roman, E. Gregory McPherson, Bryant C. Scharenbroch, Julia Bartens Abstract. Urban forest monitoring data are essential to assess the impacts of tree planting campaigns and management programs. Local practitio- ners have monitoring projects that have not been well documented in the urban forestry literature. To learn more about practitioner-driven monitoring efforts, the authors surveyed 32 local urban forestry organizations across the United States about the goals, challenges, methods, and uses of their monitoring programs, using an e-mailed questionnaire. Non-profit organizations, municipal agencies, state agencies, and utilities participated. One- half of the organizations had six or fewer urban forestry staff. Common goals for monitoring included evaluating the success of tree planting and management, taking a proactive approach towards tree care, and engaging communities. The most commonly recorded data were species, condition rating, mortality status, and diameter at breast height. Challenges included limited staff and funding, difficulties with data management and tech- nology, and field crew training. Programs used monitoring results to inform tree planting and maintenance practices, provide feedback to individu- als responsible for tree care, and manage tree risk. Participants emphasized the importance of planning ahead: carefully considering what data to collect, setting clear goals, developing an appropriate database, and planning for funding and staff time. To improve the quality and consistency of monitoring data across cities, researchers can develop standardized protocols and be responsive to practitioner needs and organizational capacities. Key Words. Citizen Science; Forest Inventory and Analysis; i-Tree; Monitoring; Survey; Tree Mortality; Tree Planting. The proliferation of urban forest inventory systems in the past few decades has allowed practitioners and researchers to quantify for- est structure and function, estimate ecosystem services, and man- age tree maintenance issues (Miller 1996; McPherson et al. 1999; Nowak and Crane 2000; Brack 2006; Keller and Konijnendijk 2012). Standardized inventory systems have enabled compari- sons of tree density, species composition, and cost–benefit ratios across cities (McPherson and Simpson 2002; McPherson et al. 2005; Nowak et al. 2008). While these inventories have enhanced researchers’ understanding of urban forests, they provide a snap- shot in time, and can quickly become outdated in a changing, com- plex urban landscape. Long-term monitoring data are essential to understand change over time in urban forests—including trends in tree mortality, growth, longevity, and health—and to assess the impacts of tree planting campaigns and management programs. Although urban forest researchers and arborists have long rec- ognized the value of monitoring data and systematically updated inventories (Weinstein 1983; Baker 1993; McPherson 1993; Clark et al. 1997; Dwyer et al. 2002, Rysin et al. 2004), they do not yet have coordinated programs to conduct longitudinal studies. The need for long-term monitoring was raised at a recent conference on urban tree growth and longevity (Leibowitz 2012). There have been several long-term monitoring programs in wildland (i.e., non-urban) forest ecosystems in the United States, including the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and Forest Health Monitor- ing programs of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Although these monitoring programs focus primarily on non- ©2013 International Society of Arboriculture urban systems, the methods and analytical tools can be adapted to urban systems. This is already happening with FIA urban pilot programs (Cumming et al. 2008). The Forest Service has also collected repeated plot-based data using i-Tree Eco in Baltimore, Maryland and Syracuse, New York, U.S. (Nowak et al. 2004; D.J. Nowak 2013. Additionally, there are two LTER sites in urban environments: Baltimore, Maryland and Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. While researchers pursue long-term data collection in cities, local urban forest practitioners are also engaged in monitor- ing. Two examples have been published online (Boyce 2010; Lu et al. 2010), but other local monitoring programs exist that are not well documented in the literature. Local monitor- ing programs are important because cities and their non-profit partners are directly involved with the planting and manage- ment of many trees in U.S. cities. By monitoring the trees they plant and maintain, these local programs can adjust their man- agement practices based on performance that is quantified, not anecdotal. Standardized protocols for urban tree monitoring would underpin comparative analyses for benchmarking per- formance among programs and across time, and promote data sharing among professionals and researchers (Leibowitz 2012). To assist in the development of standardized urban forest monitoring protocols, the authors sought to learn more about the goals and operations of practitioner-driven monitoring. A questionnaire was disseminated to urban forestry organiza- tions across the United States, specifically targeting local or- ganizations that already conduct monitoring programs and generate longitudinal data. The survey assessed: 1) common goals and motivations for monitoring; 2) the range of meth-
November 2013
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